Title : 'Machines will decide who lives and dies': AI experts call for autonomous weapons ban
link : 'Machines will decide who lives and dies': AI experts call for autonomous weapons ban
'Machines will decide who lives and dies': AI experts call for autonomous weapons ban
More than a hundred experts in artificial intelligence have signed an open letter calling on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to push for a worldwide ban on autonomous lethal weapons.
The academics and researchers from Australian universities voiced their shared concerns about what they call the weaponisation of artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence professor Toby Walsh from UNSW in Sydney, a signatory to the letter, said the world was witnessing an arms race.
"It will merely be a machine that's making the decision to target and deciding who's going to live and who is going to die," Professor Walsh said.
"At the moment, if you want to do evil, you have to persuade an army of people to do it for you, you have to be able to equip and arm them — it all takes significant resources.
"Now you wouldn't need that. You'd need just one programmer, and these machines would follow whatever orders, however evil those orders might be, to the letter."
Professor Walsh said companies should instead be investing in research for other critical uses of artificial intelligence.
"There's plenty of great things that a robot could do. No-one should ever risk a life or a limb clearing a minefield," he said.
"There's lots of great things the military can spend their money on AI that will actually save lives and be very good from a humanitarian perspective."
Professor Walsh said autonomous lethal weapons powered by artificial intelligence were already well advanced.
"In the air we've talked about autonomous drones. The US Navy has just launched its first fully autonomous ship," he said.
"Under the sea we have autonomous submarines being developed by Boeing, and on land we see a number of autonomous weapons."
Australia has potential to take moral lead
Currently 19 countries around the world have already signed on to a ban on autonomous lethal weapons, but the US, Britain, France and Australia are holding out.
Professor Walsh said Australia could take an international lead on the issue of weaponising artificial intelligence.
"What we have done in many arms discussions is actually led the way. Australia has been very active in nuclear non-proliferation and numerous other arms treaties," he said.
"It would be great if we could actually follow that again and take a strong moral lead.
"Our human rights record needs to be examined now that we are fully elected members of the [UN] Human Rights Council."
Professor Maurice Pagnucco, head of the Computer Science and Engineering School at UNSW and another signatory, said the letter was about making sure human input remains.
"There is a certain level of concern here that if humans aren't involved in making certain levels of decisions, that we really are heading down a path we don't want to take," Professor Pagnucco said.
"This is a worldwide movement, so it's not just Australia. In this case, a lot of political leaders around the world have been contacted by academics and researchers in their countries."
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