Photo: Warner Bros.
Tesla boss and futuristic visionary Elon Musk is amongst a group of more than 100 other founders of robotics and artificial intelligence companies urging the United Nations to ban autonomous weapons. What does it mean? Musk and his contemporaries actually fear the ‘end’ may be near and it really could be killer robots that take over the world.
Signing on with the wanted ban include signatories from companies spanning four continents: North America, Europe, Africa and Asia, including A.I. specialist for Google, Mustafa Suleyman.
“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,” the experts warned in an open letter recently released.
“These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways,” the letter says.
“Unlike other potential manifestations of AI, which still remain in the realm of science fiction, autonomous weapons systems are on the cusp of development right now and have a very real potential to cause significant harm to innocent people along with global instability,” said Ryan Gariepy, the founder of Clearpath Robotics and the first person to sign the letter.
Musk tweeted out this pillar of sunshine last week.
If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea. pic.twitter.com/2z0tiid0lc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2017
And it sounds like he’s spot on. More than a dozen companies are reportedly developing autonomous weapons systems, including China, Israel, South Korea, Russia, Britain and US — the United States — according to Human Rights Watch.
And oh yea, Dubai launched their first robocop earlier this year.
What or whom will save us? Keanu? Schwarzenegger?
At least Musk has another pro-active plan in place — building devices to connect the human brain to computers.
Yeah.
See ya on the other side, friends!
And speaking of robots: 10 People Who Love Robots A Little Too Much
Josh Helmuth is the editor of Crave Sports and a contributor to Mandatory.
