As if the terrifying threat of a Nuclear War between the United States and North Korea wasn’t enough, it seems we now have to worry about the potential uprising of an army of disgruntled killer robots keen to dehtrone their flesh and blood overlords.
In an open letter written to the United Nations, over a 100 of the world’s leading robotics experts – including Tesla‘s own eco-warrior Elon Musk – have voiced concerns about the use of Artificial Intelligence in high-scale weaponry.
As the owners of the very companies who have innovated this technology and actually aided its use within autonomous weapons, maybe it’s best we listen to what they have to say.
The primary concern raised by Musk and Co. is that the world simply won’t be able to cope with a war powered by more machines than men.
“Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare. Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend. These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways. We do not have long to act. Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close. We therefore implore the High Contracting Parties to find a way to protect us all from these dangers.”
This also isn’t the first time that leading scientists have raised concern about the issue, with a similar letter having been written and signed in 2015 by the likes of the esteemed Professor Stephen Hawking and Apple Co-Founder, Steve Wozniak.
So although the future of an all-out robot war might seem like something out of science fiction, the potential for weapons powered by artificial intelligence to pose a genuine threat to human life is something very much based in the realm of fact.
