Time is running out to put a ban in place against the development of killer robots, warns an open letter signed by 116 founders of robotics and artificial intelligence companies, including Elon Musk.
The letter, which warns against the proliferation of lethal autonomous weapons and urges a UN ban against such technology, has been unveiled ahead of Melbourne’s International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI).
Elon Musk is among the AI and robotics company founders that signed the open letter.
“As companies building the technologies in artificial intelligence and robotics that may be repurposed to develop autonomous weapons, we feel especially responsible in raising this alarm”, the letter states.
“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”.
The THeMIS ADDER, from Estonian company Milrem, is a smart unmanned system that could potentially be controlled by AI. Photo: Supplied
Alongside the Tesla, SpaceX and OpenAI founder Musk, the letter was signed by the head of Applied AI at Google’s DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman, the founder of Universal Robotics, Esben Østergaard, and many more. Together the companies founded by the signatories cover 26 countries and employ tens of thousands of researchers, roboticists and engineers.
The letter also expresses disappointment about the first meeting of a special UN group composed to discuss the issue. Originally set to be conducted today, the meeting has been pushed back to November.
Toby Walsh, scientia professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, helped organise the letter, as well as one that was released back in 2015. While the earlier letter, signed by more than 1000 leading researchers, pushed to get the issue recognised by the UN in the first place, Walsh hopes that getting the founders of AI and robotics companies themselves involved “will add urgency to the discussions at the UN that should have started today”.
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“Nearly every technology can be used for good and bad, and artificial intelligence is no different,” Walsh said in a statement.
The MQ-9 Reaper, by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, is an an automated drone used by the United States. Photo: Supplied
“It can help tackle many of the pressing problems facing society today: inequality and poverty, the challenges posed by climate change and the ongoing global financial crisis. However, the same technology can also be used in autonomous weapons to industrialise war. We need to make decisions today choosing which of these futures we want”.
While not all experts are in agreement that out-of-control AI or the proliferation of automated weapons is an imminent danger, most at least acknowledge the need for greater regulation to keep bleeding edge systems in check as nations increasingly build semi-autonomous machines into their defence strategies. Many current systems have “a human in the loop” to keep weapons from functioning completely on their own, but with steady growth in the competence of AI that might not always be the case.
UNSW’s Toby Walsh. Photo: Supplied
Ryan Gariepy, founder of Clearpath Robotics, was the first to sign the letter and says that although the term “killer robots” brings images of automatons from cinema to mind, the real threat is quite different.
“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”, he says.
“The development of lethal autonomous weapons systems is unwise, unethical and should be banned on an international scale”.
The IJCAI, which is the world’s biggest AI conference, was first held in 1969 and this year has attracted 2000 experts from around the world. In 2017 Chinese participation is at an all time high, according to the event’s organisers, representing a quarter of all delegates. This year’s theme of discussion is on the challenges of developing fully autonomous “thinking machines”, which many researchers still believe are 50 years or more away.
Article source: http://watoday.com.au/small-business/managing/work-in-progress/intercultural-relationships-a-factor-in-entrepreneurial-success-research-shows-20170720-gxfmwo.html
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