Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk and Google DeepMind's cofounders have signed a pledge not to not to develop lethal autonomous weapons, along with thousands of other AI researchers, engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs.
The pledge — organised by The Future of Life Institute (FLI), a Boston-based research organisation aiming to mitigate existential risks facing humanity — was published on Wednesday at the 2018 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Stockholm.
"We the undersigned agree that the decision to take a human life should never be delegated to a machine," the pledge reads. It goes on to warn "lethal autonomous weapons, selecting and engaging targets without human intervention, would be dangerously destabilizing for every country and individual."
By signing the pledge, the signatories have promised to "neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons."
Many of the signatories, including Musk and DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman, signed an open letter last August urging the United Nations to ban the development of autonomous weapons.
Recent advancements in AI mean that autonomous tanks, drones, missiles, and machine guns aren't beyond the realms of possibility.
DeepMind, a London-based AI company backed by Musk before it was acquired by Google, is often referred to as the world leader when it comes to AI research. It employs over 700 people and it's now looking at how it can apply its AI systems to a wide range of fields. All three of the company's founders —Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg, and Mustafa Suleyman — have all signed the pledge.
Other signatories include Jeff Dean, the leader of Google's AI division, Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn, and MIT professor Max Tegmark, who is also the president of FLI.
Tegmark said in a press release that AI leaders are "shifting from talk to action" adding that they're "implementing a policy that politicians have thus far failed to put into effect."
He added: "AI weapons that autonomously decide to kill people are as disgusting and destabilizing as bioweapons, and should be dealt with in the same way."
The pledge has been signed by over 160 AI-related companies from 36 countries and 2,400 individuals from 90 countries.
