MEXICO: More than a thousand artificial intelligence researchers co-signed an open letter urging the United Nations (UN) to ban the development and use of autonomous weapons.
Presented at the 2015 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the letter features prominent researchers studying artificial intelligence (AI) including scientists like Google’s director of research Peter Norvig, alongside Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and physicist Stephen Hawking. Since Monday, over 16,000 additional people signed the letter, according to the Guardian.
The letter states that the development of autonomous weapons, or weapons that can target and fire without a human at the controls, could bring about a “third revolution in warfare,” much like the creation of guns and nuclear bombs before it.
While killer robots sound terrifying, there are some real reasons that weapons powered by sophisticated AI might even be preferable to humans.
Autonomous weapons would take human soldiers out of the line of fire and potentially reduce the number of casualties in wars. Killer robots would be better soldiers all around – they’re faster, more accurate, more powerful, and can take more physical damage than humans.
