Autonomous killer weapons are being opposed in an online pledge by artificial intelligence innovators, including Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, National Public Radio reported Wednesday.
Some of the leading AI minds signed the pledge at the annual International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Stockholm Wednesday. The researchers said that weapons that can function without human oversight should be real concern, NPR said.
"We the undersigned agree that the decision to take a human life should never be delegated to a machine," the pledge on the Future of Life Institute website said. "There is a moral component to this position, that we should not allow machines to make life-taking decisions for which others – or nobody – will be culpable.
"There is also a powerful pragmatic argument: lethal autonomous weapons, selecting and engaging targets without human intervention, would be dangerously destabilizing for every country and individual," the pledge continued.
The pledge stated that AI weapons could become a "powerful instrument of violence and oppression" if the systems are linked to surveillance and data systems.
"Moreover, lethal autonomous weapons have characteristics quite different from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the unilateral actions of a single group could too easily spark an arms race that the international community lacks the technical tools and global governance systems to manage," the pledge continued.
Google DeepMind co-founders Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg, and Mustafa Suleyman also signed the pledge. The document stated that more than 170 organizations and 2,400 individuals have supported the pledge, according to NPR.
Musk has discussed fears of artificial intelligence in general, telling the National Governors Association last year that AI was "a fundamental existential risk for human civilization."
Not everyone agrees with the assessment. U.S. Rep. Pete Olsen of Texas told NPR that he was optimistic about the future of artificial intelligences.
"These are machines that are learning over time from activities they've done," Olsen said to NPR. "They become sort of intelligent through that learning. This is the great value, great tremendous benefit for our country."
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