More than 1,000 science and technology experts on Monday published an open letter calling for a ban on autonomous weapons—machines capable of killing without human operators—to prevent a “virtually inevitable” high-stakes global arms race.
Among the signatories are physicist and professor Stephen Hawking, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, among many others. The letter was presented at the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
“Autonomous weapons select and engage targets without human intervention,” the letter states. “Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a point where the deployment of such systems is—practically if not legally—feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms.”
The letter continues:
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Proponents of autonomous weapons say the machines would be useful in reducing military casualties on the battlefield. But the letter’s authors counter that, in doing so, the weapons would lower the threshold for armed conflict—risking more frequent battles and a greater loss of civilian life.
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