One would think that the executives at the helms of the top artificial intelligence companies in the world would be behind the advancement of AI in every way. Instead, 116 founders of robotics and artificial intelligence companies from 26 countries are using the world’s biggest artificial intelligence conference as a platform to plea for the United Nations to ban “killer robots,” otherwise known as “lethal autonomous weapons.”
According to Business Insider, a formal letter kicked off the conference, and was said to be the first time that AI and robotics companies have taken a joint stand on the issue. Executives represented include Tesla founder Elon Musk, as well as others from companies such as Universal Robotics, Element AI, and Google’s DeepMind.
The open letter warns that, once developed, these weapons “will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend." They also caution that the weapons could be hackable, and that the scary part is that this kind of artificial intelligence is actually on the cusp of being developed – as opposed to many other categories of the technology that are still in the visionary stage.
The UN will meet later this year to discuss the robot arms race.