Poetic.Injustice
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Some of the worlds leading robotics and artificial intelligence pioneers are calling on the United Nations to ban the development and use of killer robots.
Teslas Elon Musk and Googles Mustafa Suleyman are leading a group of 116 specialists from across 26 countries who are calling for the ban on autonomous weapons.
The UN recently voted to begin formal discussions on such weapons which include drones, tanks and automated machine guns. Ahead of this, the group of founders of AI and robotics companies have sent an open letter to the UN calling for it to prevent the arms race that is currently under way for killer robots.
The founders wrote: Once developed, lethal autonomous weapons 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 Pandoras box is opened, it will be hard to close.
The fixed-place sentry gun, developed on behalf of the South Korean government, was the first of its kind with an autonomous system capable of performing surveillance, voice-recognition, tracking and firing with mounted machine gun or grenade launcher. But it is not the only autonomous weapon system in development, with prototypes available for land, air and sea combat.
The UKs Taranis drone, in development by BAE Systems, is intended to be capable of carrying air-to-air and air-to-ground ordnance intercontinentally and incorporating full autonomy. The unmanned combat aerial vehicle, about the size of a BAE Hawk, the plane used by the Red Arrows, had its first test flight in 2013 and is expected to be operational some time after 2030 as part of the Royal Air Forces Future Offensive Air System, destined to replace the human-piloted Tornado GR4 warplanes.
Russia, the US and other countries are currently developing robotic tanks that can either be remote controlled or operate autonomously. These projects range from autonomous versions of the Russian Uran-9 unmanned combat ground vehicle, to conventional tanks retrofitted with autonomous systems.
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...ts-outright-ban-lethal-autonomous-weapons-war