Journalist calls for banning robots

Technology mogul Elon Musk and the world's leading artificial intelligence experts have called on the United Nations to ban robots.

Els Musk of Tesla and Mustafa Suleyma of Google led a group of 116 people from 26 countries to sign a letter urging the United Nations (UN) to ban automatic weapons of mass destruction to prevent a new weapons revolution. / 8 reported.

The letter appeared in the context of the UN's vote to agree to initiate formal discussions on the issue of automatic firearms including unmanned aerial vehicles, tanks and automatic machine guns.

American billionaire Elon Musk. Photo: AFP.

In the letter, founders warn that the race to develop automatic weapons of mass destruction could lead to a third weapons revolution after gunpowder and nuclear weapons. "Automatically developing weapons of mass destruction will cause armed conflict to take place at unprecedented rates at a rate faster than human imagination can give."

According to experts, terrorists can use this weapon to kill civilians. People need to act now. Once opened, this Pandora's disaster box will be difficult to close , " the letter said. AI technology has been warned to reach the feasibility of deploying automatic weapons in just a few years. Musk called AI the greatest threat to human existence.

The letter will be released at the opening of the International Association for the Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Melbourne, Australia on 21 August, calling on UN to list automatic weapons-trafficking systems in the weapons list. Prohibited in the Convention on conventional arms of the United Nations. Two years ago, IJCAI issued a letter with similar content.

Britain in 2015 opposed the automatic moratorium on firearms, arguing that international humanitarian law was in place. Many types of automatic firearms have been developed or put into use in the world.

"AI technology used to support humans can also be used as an automatic weapon to industrialize war," said Toby Walsh, an AI professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. "Now we need to decide what we want to choose the future."