The possibility of Skynet ruling the world of humanity is strong enough to spook the upper echelons of the scientific world. An open letter denouncing the militarization of artificial intelligence into autonomous offensive weapons has been signed by the likes of Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder, Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX founder, and Google DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis.
Other notable names joining the call are Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, Noam Chomsky, Google scientist Geoff Hinton, and Microsoft top mind Eric Horvitz. They lead the thousand plus strong list of signatures from scientists, researchers, and engineers who all warn against the wrong use of artificial intelligence (AI) and its implications on humanity.
The letter is hosted by the Future of Life Institute. The institute received a $ 10 million donation from Elon Musk.
The contention is simple: allow a human to make the decision to pull the trigger. Any arbitration by a machine on this matter should be out of the question. This classification puts current armaments like the cruise missile and weaponized drones within human consideration. Read below the letter which prompted this latest call for caution:
"If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow. Unlike nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group."
