Peter Asaro opines that we need an international agreement to prevent the development of autonomous weapons before they threaten global security. Last week the Future of Life Institute released a letter signed by some 1,500 researchers in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and technology. Among them were celebrities of science and the technology industry, such as Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, along with public intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Daniel Dennett. The letter called for an international ban on offensive autonomous weapons, which could target and fire weapons without meaningful human control.
This week is the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together killing over 200,000 people, mostly civilians. It took 10 years before the physicist Albert Einstein and philosopher Bertrand Russell, along with nine other prominent scientists and intellectuals, issued a letter calling for global action to address the threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons. They were motivated by the atomic devastation in Japan but also by the escalating arms race of the Cold War that was rapidly and vastly increasing the number, destructive capability, and efficient delivery of nuclear arms, draining vast resources and putting humanity at risk of total destruction. They also note in their letter that those who knew the most about the effects of such weapons were the most concerned and pessimistic about their continued development and use.
I2MWPEds - But the human conditions are such that if the bad guys build bombs, so must the good guys. Similarly, if the bad guys build offensive robotic weapons, then the good guys must likewise, if only for defense and retaliation, after recovering from a first strike. An answer is needed ...
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