Musk & Hawking sign letter warning against future AI arms race: are they too late?

On Tuesday, during the 24th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Buenos Aires Argentina, an open letter signed by 1000 leading AI and robotics researchers along with public figures such as Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, was released that recommended banning autonomous AI weapons. The researchers advised against such a development which could spur a future AI arms race that would be detrimental to humanity’s long term survival. Their letter appeared only nine days after the Jade Helm 15 military exercise was launched in seven US states, and is claimed to be using AI quantum computing to make battlefield decisions. Are Musk, Hawking and the other AI researchers too late?

The letter is titled: “Autonomous Weapons: an Open Letter from AI & Robotics Researchers.” It describes the military interest in the development of AI autonomous weapons:

Autonomous weapons select and engage targets without human intervention. They might include, for example, armed quadcopters that can search for and eliminate people meeting certain pre-defined criteria, but do not include cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make all targeting decisions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems is — practically if not legally — feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.

The letter goes on to explain why AI weapons should be banned:

The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. 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…. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity.

The letter next goes on to compare the development of AI weapons with earlier research into chemical weapons. Just as there are treaties banning chemical weapons development, the researchers believe there should also be international treaties banning AI weapons development:

Indeed, chemists and biologists have broadly supported international agreements that have successfully prohibited chemical and biological weapons,… we believe that AI has great potential to benefit humanity in many ways, and that the goal of the field should be to do so. Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.

Media sources have treated the dire warning by referring to the fictional “Skynet” in the Terminator movie franchise as the kind of autonomous AI system that might be developed in the future.  There is evidence, however, that “Skynet” is not a fictional AI weapons system that might be developed in the years ahead, but is currently being secretly developed even deployed right now….

Continue Reading