Elon Musk has led the drafting of an open letter to the UN demanding an end to the development of autonomous weapons, among which military drones stand out.
Elon Musk, a group of 116 experts in artificial intelligence and some other illustrious figure such as the CEO of DeepMind (behind the dedicated division in Google) have joined forces to convey in a letter to the United Nations their opinion on autonomous weapons. In it they ask that they be removed from circulation and their development abandoned.
The message is consistent with what the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla has been advocating for some time. Without any technophobe, and is, in fact, quite the contrary, even too idealistic at times, has stated on multiple occasions that while artificial intelligence will be a great field ally of the human species, must be regulated and controlled if we don’t want that when you reach a development given us again against us and let’s turn to dominate, to be dominated.
With respect to autonomous weapons, which are those that they do not need to be controlled for damagelike the drones the U.S. has been sending to Arab Countries for years on questionable missions, the group claims they can be a turning point for gunpowder and nuclear weapons. As Musk did with artificial intelligence, the group now not only calls for measures to curb the advance of the arms industry in that regard, but they demand that they arrive as quickly as possibleotherwise it might be too late.
The great controversy surrounding these weapons, which is evident in the open letter, is that, although on certain occasions their use could make some sense if there is no alternative, its development can be fatal the moment it reaches the hands of a growing international terrorism and that he would not hesitate to use them against the civilian population. Nor is the conflict between the United States and North Korea reassuring in this regard, but at least it seems that the forces are measured more against possible repercussions.
After many years of demands, it has not been possible to carry out nuclear disarmament, so it will be difficult for minor threats like these to be conceived as such within the UN, but the end of the autonomous weapons is something that at least we must try.
