Toby Walsh - Noam Chomsky and Stephen Hawking among a thousand intellectuals to sign Open Letter to Stop Killer Robots Before They’re Built
More than a thousand leading researchers in artificial
intelligence (AI) and robotics signed and published an open
letter calling for a ban on offensive autonomous weapons, also known
colloquially as “killer robots”, on July 27. The letter has also been signed by many technologists and
experts, including SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, physicist Stephen Hawking,
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Skype co-founder Jaan Talinn and linguist and
activist Noam Chomsky.
Musk, Hawking and Wozniak have
all recently warned about the dangers that AI poses to mankind. Though it has
to be said, Wozniak thinks humans will be fine if robots take over the world;
we’ll just become their pets. The open letter urges the UN to support a ban on offensive
autonomous weapons systems. This follows the April meeting of the Convention on Conventional Weapons held at
the UN in Geneva discussing
such an idea.
The letter argues that the deployment of such autonomous
weapons is feasible within years, and will play a dangerous role in driving the
next revolution in warfare. In the interest of full disclosure, I too have signed this
letter. My view is that almost every technology can be used for good or bad.
And AI is no different. We therefore need to make a choice as to which path to
follow.
Artificial intelligence is a technology that can be used to
help tackle many of the pressing problems facing society today: inequality and
poverty; the rising cost of health care; the impact of global warming, and many
others. But it can also be used to inflict unnecessary harm. And now is the
right time to get in place a ban before this next arms race begins. The open letter – reprinted below – gives a good summary of
the arguments for a ban. In short, there is likely to be an arms race in such
technology that will revolutionise warfare for the worse.
What we can learn from history
As always, we can learn a lot from history. A recent example
is the UN
Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, which came into force in 1998. The
International Committee of the Red Cross argued that the ban was an historic step
for humanity, stating that:
It represents the first time since 1868, when the use of
exploding bullets was banned, that a weapon of military interest has been
banned before its use on the battlefield and before a stream of victims gave
visible proof of its tragic effects.
Of course, the technology for blinding lasers still exists;
medical lasers that correct eyesight are an example of the very same
technology. But because of this ban, no arms manufacturer sells blinding
lasers. And we don’t have any victims of blinding lasers to care for.
Similarly, a ban on offensive autonomous weapons is not
going to prevent the technology for such weapons being developed. After all, it
would take only a few lines of code to turn an autonomous car into an offensive
weapon. But a ban would ensure enough stigma and consequences if breached that
we are unlikely to see conventional military forces using them.
This won’t stop terrorist and other smaller groups who care
little for UN protocols, but they will be constrained on two levels. First,
they’ll have to develop the technology themselves. They won’t be able to go out
and buy any such weapons. And second, conventional military forces can still
use any defensive technologies they like to protect
themselves.
Now is the time
With this open letter, we hope to bring awareness to a dire
subject which, without a doubt, will have a vicious impact on the whole of
mankind. We can get it right at this early stage, or we can stand
idly by and witness the birth of a new era of warfare. Frankly, that’s not
something many scientists in this field want to see. Our call to action is simple: ban offensive
autonomous weapons, and in doing so, securing a safe future for us all.
A press conference releasing the open letter to the public
will be held at the opening of the International
Joint Conference on AI at 9 pm AEST, July 28, 2015. To watch the
streaming of the press conference on Periscope (live or for the next 24 hours),
follow @TobyWalsh on
Twitter for notification of the stream.
The following is the entire text of the open letter:
Autonomous weapons select and engage targets without human
intervention. They might include, for example, armed quadcopters that can
search for and eliminate people meeting certain pre-defined criteria, but do
not include cruise missiles or remotely piloted drones for which humans make
all targeting decisions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a
point where the deployment of such systems is – practically if not legally –
feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons
have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and
nuclear arms.
Many arguments have been made for and against autonomous
weapons, for example that replacing human soldiers by machines is good by
reducing casualties for the owner but bad by thereby lowering the threshold for
going to battle. The key question for humanity today is whether to start a
global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power
pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually
inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious:
autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow.
Unlike nuclear
weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become
ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. It
will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the
hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace,
warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are
ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing
populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore
believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity.
There are many ways in which AI can make battlefields safer for humans,
especially civilians, without creating new tools for killing people.
Just as most chemists and biologists have no interest in
building chemical or biological weapons, most AI researchers have no interest
in building AI weapons — and do not want others to tarnish their field by doing
so, potentially creating a major public backlash against AI that curtails its
future societal benefits. Indeed, chemists and biologists have broadly
supported international agreements that have successfully prohibited chemical
and biological weapons, just as most physicists supported the treaties banning
space-based nuclear weapons and blinding laser weapons.
In summary, we believe that AI has great potential to
benefit humanity in many ways, and that the goal of the field should be to do
so. Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by
a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.
See also
