More than a thousand artificial-intelligence researchers have cosigned an open letter calling for a ban on autonomous weapons, or “killer robots.”
As The Verge reports, they have been joined by hundreds more sympathetic signatories from outside the industry — including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, scientist Stephen Hawking, and social theorist Noam Chomsky.
Autonomous weapons capable of attacking targets without human intervention don’t yet exist, but that hasn’t prevented fierce debate about their potential creation and use.
Opponents fear that their invention would have extremely dangerous consequences for humanity, would be liable to misuse, and raise difficult ethical questions.