Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made it very clear that he will only support AI development with strict regulation involved. After he signed an open letter to the United Nations, the UK government has taken the first step by planning to ban fully autonomous weapons.
Great Britain said in an official announcement from the Ministry of Defense that the country would not use fully autonomous weapons in battle. This is a departure from Russian projects that include AI-powered missiles and fully autonomous drones, according to Futurism.
“UK policy is that the operation of weapons will always be under control as an absolute guarantee of human oversight, authority and accountability,” the Ministry of Defense said in an interview with The Guardian. “The UK does not possess fully autonomous weapon systems and has no intention of developing them.”
Musk and several other high-profile influencers in the industry — including Google Alphabet’s Mustafa Suleyman — sent an open letter to the United Nations in late August asking the organization to help regulate “killer robots.”
The Russian projects bring Musk’s greatest AI fears closer to reality. Musk has long been a skeptic of radical AI development, saying that it would one day bring an end to the human race.
The serial tech entrepreneur went as far as retweeting an article earlier this week detailing how hackers have begun to weaponize artificial intelligence. The article explained how an AI program pumped out 6.75 malicious tweets a minute compared to the human’s average of only 1.075 tweets per minute.
Musk’s statements are the direct opposite of those made by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin said that whoever led AI development would one day be “ruler of the world.”
Musk responded by saying he felt that this kind of logic could someday push the globe into its third world war.
Musk’s opposition came, as usual, in the form of a tweet.
China, Russia, soon all countries w strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 imo.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2017