Two of the world’s pioneers in robotics and artificial intelligence are leading calls for the United Nations to ban the creation of killer robots

(VERO BEACH, FL) Tesla’s Elon Musk and Alphabet’s Mustafa Suleyman are heading a group of 116 industry specialists from 26 countries, all calling for a ban on autonomous weapons.

As part of their efforts to curb the development of “real-life terminators”, the group has authored an open letter detailing their concerns, and issuing humanity an ominous warning about the potential of starting a “third revolution in warfare”.

“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,” the group wrote in their letter which debuted  Monday at the opening of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Melbourne. “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 Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close,” the letter states.

The group has called for “morally wrong” lethal autonomous weapons systems to be classified in the same vein as chemical weaponry and intentionally blinding laser weapons, which have been banned since 1983 under the UN’s convention on certain conventional weapons (CCW).

This letter comes ahead of a recent vote by the UN to begin formal discussions on the legality of such weapons, including drones, tanks and automated machine guns.

Some weapons systems equipped with autonomous capabilities have already been deployed, one example being Samsung’s SGR-A1 sentry gun, which is in use along the Korean Demilitarized Zone.

Many countries are currently developing autonomous weapon systems, including the UK’s Taranis unmanned combat aerial vehicle, Russia’s Uran-9 unmanned combat ground vehicle, and America’s Sea Hunter autonomous warship.

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