Elon Musk joins other experts to urge UN to ban artificial intelligence in weapons

Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk has joined dozens of CEOs of artificial intelligence companies in signing an open letter urging the United Nations to ban the use of AI in weapons before the technology gets out of hand.

The letter was published Monday – the same day the U.N.’s Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems was due to meet to discuss ways to protect civilians from the misuse of automated weapons. That meeting, however, has been postponed until November.

“Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare,” read the letter, which was also signed by the chief executives of companies such as Cafe X Technologies, which built an autonomous barista, and PlusOne Robotics, whose robots automate manual labour. “Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close. Therefore we implore the High Contracting Parties to find a way to protect us all from these dangers.”

The letter’s sentiments echo those in another open letter that Musk – along with more than 3,000 AI and robotics researchers, plus others such as Stephen Hawking and Steve Wozniak – signed nearly two years ago. In the 2015 letter, the signatories warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence in weapons, which could be used in “assassinations, destabilising nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group.”

Many nations are already familiar with drone warfare, in which human-piloted drones are deployed in lieu of putting soldiers on site. Lower costs, as well as that they don’t risk the lives of military personnel, have contributed to their rising popularity. Automated weapons would take things a step further, removing human intervention entirely, and potentially improving efficiency. But it could also open a whole new can of worms, according to the 2015 letter, “lowering the threshold for going to battle” and creating a global arms race in which lethal technology can be mass-produced, deployed, hacked and misused.

For example, the letter says, there could be armed quadcopters that search for and eliminate people who meet pre-defined criteria.