Masdar Smart City and Robotics - GineersNow Engineering Magazine Masdar: The Future of Sustainable City in Abu Dhab | Page 30

BIG GUYS - HAWKING , WOZNIAK , HASSABIS AND MUSK ARE OPPOSING AUTONOMOUS WEAPONS

30
JULY 2016 Future Cities & Robotics
Until now , it was just in the science fiction movies , but now , it is known that the “ killer robots ” are possible . Throughout the world , there are around 40 countries that are engaged in building autonomous robots . Probably , the day is not far when the humanity has to be on war against the machines for their survival . There are talks that the world is nearing an autonomous arms race . To stop this kind of a destructive war , which can have a devastating impact on the entire humanity , some great scientists of the world have come together . They have filed a petition to the governments all around the world to put ban on
autonomous weapons . There are some high profile names on the list of petitioners including Prof . Stephen Hawking , Tesla ’ s CEO Elon Musk , Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak . They have joined hands to put a ban on the designing and development of weapons that can autonomously “ select and engage targets without human interventions .”
The letter of declaration states : “ AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of [ autonomous weapons ] is – practically if not legally – feasible within years , not decades ,