Elon Musk and 115 other experts send a letter to the UN to prevent the development of autonomous tanks, aircraft and machine guns.
An open letter addressed to the United Nations calls for the prohibition of the development and use of autonomous weapons. The possibility that on the battlefield enter tanks, planes and unmanned machine guns in the coming years, instead of taking decades to arrive, has put on alert experts who are ruling to prevent this arms race. Among the signatories are Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla who has already warned that AI will be the greatest threat to humanity, and Deepmind founder Mustafa Suleyman.
"We do not have much time to act, once the Pandora's box is opened, it will be difficult to close it", wrote a group of 116 specialists in robotics and artificial intelligence from 26 different countries.
The autonomous weapons are considered to be the "third revolution in the war" as in the past was gunpowder and then nuclear weapons. But it is feared that they suppose excessive human deaths. "Once they have been developed, autonomous weapons will open the door to an armed conflict on a scale never seen before, they can become weapons for terror, weapons that despots and terrorists can use against innocent populations or as modified weapons of war. so that they work as they want ", warn with forcefulness.
To prevent that Pandora's box from being opened, they request that they be included in the list of prohibited weapons of the 1983 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, such as chemical weapons. A decision that will protect us from its destructive power.
The SGR-A1 War Robot, from South Korea / source
The worry comes because several countries have capabilities to integrate these killer robots into their ranks. According to The Guardian, South Korea, commissioning it to Samsung, developed the SGR-A1 military sentinel robot capable of watching and shooting the enemy without anyone directing it. They report that he would be present throughout the demilitarized zone of Korea.
It would not be the only state interested in these weapons. The British media assures that Russia is preparing an autonomous combat tank. United States a submarine and United Kingdom a drone armed with air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles. The ruthless wars imagined by science fiction will be a reality if the UN does not slow down its development.