In a dramatic turn of events signifying how close the world has probably come to making the “Terminator” series a reality, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Mustafa Suleyman of Google’s Deepmind and 114 other AI experts have called on the UN to ban AI weapons, claiming that these could be catastrophic. Terming autonomous weapons as “killer robots”the experts wrote an open letter warning about the perilous rise of machines that could scale conflict much faster than human comprehension.
In an age when the world is fascinated and entertained by movies featuring AI takeovers and robot wars, the group of experts predict that continuing to use AI weapons will usher in what they term “the third revolution in warfare”, opening a Pandora’s box.
Interestingly, Musk has been quite vocal about the dangers of AI for years. For instance, he was part of a group of over 1000 AI experts who wrote an open letter warning against AI in 2015. He also tweeted earlier this year that AI was more dangerous than North Korea. And not much earlier, Musk and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg verbally fenced over AI.
The latest letter to the UN, though, is much more vocal. The UN weapons group is due to meet in November, when the role of AI weapons will probably be discussed.
