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Nand Kishor is the Product Manager of House of Bots. After finishing his studies in computer science, he ideated & re-launched Real Estate Business Intelligence Tool, where he created one of the leading Business Intelligence Tool for property price analysis in 2012. He also writes, research and sharing knowledge about Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Data Science, Big Data, Python Language etc... ...

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Nand Kishor is the Product Manager of House of Bots. After finishing his studies in computer science, he ideated & re-launched Real Estate Business Intelligence Tool, where he created one of the leading Business Intelligence Tool for property price analysis in 2012. He also writes, research and sharing knowledge about Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Data Science, Big Data, Python Language etc...

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The world's top artificial intelligence companies are pleading for a ban on killer robots

By Nand Kishor |Email | Aug 24, 2017 | 8682 Views

A revolution in warfare where killer robots, or autonomous weapons systems, are common in battlefields is about to start.

Both scientists and industry are worried.

The world's top artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics companies have used a conference in Melbourne to collectively urge the United Nations to ban killer robots or lethal autonomous weapons.

An open letter by 116 founders of robotics and artificial intelligence companies from 26 countries was launched at the world's biggest artificial intelligence conference, the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), as the UN delays meeting until later this year to discuss the robot arms race.

Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales, released the letter at the opening of the opening of the conference, the world's pre-eminent gathering of experts in artificial intelligence and robotics.

The letter is the first time that AI and robotics companies have taken a joint stand on the issue. Previously, only a single company, Canada's Clearpath Robotics, had formally called for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons.

In December 2016, 123 member nations of the UN's Review Conference of the Convention on Conventional Weapons unanimously agreed to begin formal talks on autonomous weapons. Of these, 19 have already called for a ban.

"Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare," the letter says.

"Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend.

"These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways. We do not have long to act. Once this Pandora's box is opened, it will be hard to close."

Signatories of the 2017 letter include:

  • Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, SpaceX and OpenAI (US)
  • Mustafa Suleyman, founder and Head of Applied AI at Google's DeepMind (UK)
  • Esben Ã?stergaard, founder & CTO of Universal Robotics (Denmark)
  • Jerome Monceaux, founder of Aldebaran Robotics, makers of Nao and Pepper robots (France)
  • Jü rgen Schmidhuber, leading deep learning expert and founder of Nnaisense (Switzerland)
  • Yoshua Bengio, leading deep learning expert and founder of Element AI (Canada)

Walsh is one of the organisers of the 2017 letter, as well as an earlier letter released in 2015 at the IJCAI conference in Buenos Aires, which warned of the dangers of autonomous weapons.

The 2015 letter was signed by thousands of researchers working in universities and research labs around the world, and was endorsed by British physicist Stephen Hawking, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky.

"Nearly every technology can be used for good and bad, and artificial intelligence is no different," says Walsh.

"It can help tackle many of the pressing problems facing society today: inequality and poverty, the challenges posed by climate change and the ongoing global financial crisis. However, the same technology can also be used in autonomous weapons to industrialise war.

"We need to make decisions today choosing which of these futures we want. I strongly support the call by many humanitarian and other organisations for an UN ban on such weapons, similar to bans on chemical and other weapons," he added."

Ryan Gariepy, founder of Clearpath Robotics, says the number of prominent companies and individuals who have signed this letter reinforces the warning that this is not a hypothetical scenario but a very real and pressing concern.

"We should not lose sight of the fact that, unlike other potential manifestations of AI which still remain in the realm of science fiction, autonomous weapons systems are on the cusp of development right now and have a very real potential to cause significant harm to innocent people along with global instability," he says.

"The development of lethal autonomous weapons systems is unwise, unethical and should be banned on an international scale."

The letter:

An Open Letter to the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons 

As companies building the technologies in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics that may be repurposed to develop autonomous weapons, we feel especially responsible in raising this alarm. We warmly welcome the decision of the UN's Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) to establish a Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems. Many of our researchers and engineers are eager to offer technical advice to your deliberations. We commend the appointment of Ambassador Amandeep Singh Gill of India as chair of the GGE. We entreat the High Contracting Parties participating in the GGE to work hard at finding means to prevent an arms race in these weapons, to protect civilians from their misuse, and to avoid the destabilizing effects of these technologies.

We regret that the GGE's first meeting, which was due to start today, has been cancelled due to a small number of states failing to pay their financial contributions to the UN. We urge the High Contracting Parties therefore to double their efforts at the first meeting of the GGE now planned for November.

Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare. Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend. These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways. We do not have long to act. Once this Pandora's box is opened, it will be hard to close.

We therefore implore the High Contracting Parties to find a way to protect us all from these dangers.

FULL LIST OF SIGNATORIES (by country):
  • Tiberio Caetano, founder & Chief Scientist at Ambiata, Australia.
  • Mark Chatterton and Leo Gui, founders, MD & of Ingenious AI, Australia.
  • Charles Gretton, founder of Hivery, Australia. Brad Lorge, founder & CEO of Premonition.io, Australia
  • Brenton O'Brien, founder & CEO of Microbric, Australia.
  • Samir Sinha, founder & CEO of Robonomics AI, Australia.
  • Ivan Storr, founder & CEO, Blue Ocean Robotics, Australia.
  • Peter Turner, founder & MD of Tribotix, Australia.
  • Yoshua Bengio, founder of Element AI & Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, Canada.
  • Ryan Gariepy, founder & CTO, Clearpath Robotics, found & CTO of OTTO Motors, Canada.
  • James Chow, founder & CEO of UBTECH Rob otics, China.
  • Robert Li, founder & CEO of Sankobot, China.
  • Marek Rosa, founder & CEO of GoodAI, Czech Republic.
  • Søren Tranberg Hansen, founder & CEO of Brainbotics, Denmark.
  • Markus Järve, founder & CEO of Krakul, Estonia.
  • Harri Valpola, founder & CTO of ZenRobotics, founder & CEO of Curious AI Company, Finland.
  • Esben Ã?stergaard, founder & CTO of Universal Robotics, Denmark.
  • Raul Bravo, founder & CEO of DIBOTICS, France.
  • Raphael Cherrier, founder & CEO of Qucit, France.
  • Jerome Monceaux, founder & CEO of Spoon.ai, founder & CCO of Aldebaran Robotics, France.
  • Charles Ollion, founder & Head of Research at Heuritech, France.
  • Anis Sahbani, founder & CEO of Enova Robotics, France.
  • Alexandre Vallette, founder of SNIPS & Ants Open Innovation Labs, France.
  • Marcus Frei, founder & CEO of NEXT.robotics, Germany
  • Kirstinn Thorisson, founder & Director of Icelandic Institute for Intelligence Machines, Iceland.
  • Fahad Azad, founder of Robosoft Systems, India.
  • Debashis Das, Ashish Tupate, Jerwin Prabu, founders (incl. CEO ) of Bharati Robotics, India.
  • Pulkit Gaur, founder & CTO of Gridbots Technologies, India.
  • Pranay Kishore, founder & CEO of Phi Robotics Research, India.
  • Shahid Memom, founder & CTO of Vanora Robots, India.
  • Krishnan Nambiar & Shahid Memon, founders, CEO & C TO of Vanora Robotics, India.
  • Achu Wilson, founder & CTO of Sastra Robotics, India.
  • Neill Gernon, founder & MD of Atrovate, founder of Dublin.AI, Ireland.
  • Parsa Ghaffari, founder & CEO of Aylien, Ireland.
  • Alan Holland, founder & CEO of Keelvar Systems, Ireland.
  • Alessandro Prest, founder & CTO of LogoGrab, Ireland.
  • Alessio Bonfietti, founder & CEO of MindIT, Italy.
  • Angelo Sudano, founder & CTO of ICan Robotics, Italy.
  • Shigeo Hirose, Michele Guarnieri, Paulo Debenest, & Nah Kitano, founders, CEO & Directors of HiBot
  • Corporation, Japan.
  • Luis Samahí García González, founder & CEO of QOLbotics, Mexico.
  • Koen Hindriks & Joachim de Greeff, founders, CEO & COO at Interactive Robotics, the Netherlands.
  • Maja Rudinac, founder and CEO of Robot Care Systems, the Netherlands.
  • Jaap van Leeuwen, founder and CEO Blue Ocean Robotics Benelux, the Netherlands.
  • Dyrkoren Erik, Martin Ludvigsen & Christine Spiten, founders, CEO, CTO & Head of Marketing at
  • BlueEye Robotics, Norway.
  • Sergii Kornieiev, founder & CEO of BaltRobotics, Poland.
  • Igor Kuznetsov, founder & CEO of NaviRobot, Russian Federation.
  • Aleksey Yuzhakov & Oleg Kivokurtsev, founders, CEO & COO of Promobot, Russian Federation.
  • Junyang Woon, founder & CEO, Infinium Robotics, former Branch Head & Naval Warfare Operations Officer, Singapore.
  • Jasper Horrell, founder of DeepData, South Africa.
  • Toni Ferrate, founder & CEO of RO â?? BOTICS, Spain.
  • José Manuel del Río, founder & CEO of Aisoy Robotics, Spain. Victor Martin, founder & CEO of Macco Robotics, Spain.
  • Timothy Llewellynn, founder & CEO of nViso, Switzerland.
  • Francesco Mondada, founder of K â?? Team, Switzerland.
  • Jurgen Schmidhuber, Faustino Gomez, Jan Koutník, Jonathan Masci & Bas Steunebrink, founders,
  • President & CEO of Nnaisense, Switzerland.
  • Satish Ramachandran, founder of AROBOT, United Arab Emirates.
  • Silas Adekunle, founder & CEO of Reach Robotics, UK.
  • Steve Allpress, founder & CTO of FiveAI, UK.
  • Joel Gibbard and Samantha Payne, founders, CEO & COO of Open Bionics, UK.
  • Richard Greenhill & Rich Walker, founders & MD of Shadow Robot Company, UK.
  • Nic Greenway, founder of React AI Ltd (Aiseedo), UK.
  • Daniel Hulme, founder & CEO of Satalia, UK.
  • Charlie Muirhead & Tabitha Goldstaub, founders & CEO of Cognitio nX, UK.
  • Geoff Pegman, founder & MD of R U Robots, UK.
  • Mustafa Suleyman, founder & Head of Applied AI, DeepMind, UK.
  • Donald Szeto, Thomas Stone & Kenneth Chan, founders, CTO, COO & Head of Engineering of PredictionIO, UK.
  • Antoine Biondeau, founder & CEO of Sentient Technologies, USA.
  • Brian Gerkey, founder & CEO of Open Source Robotics, USA.
  • Ryan Hickman & Soohyun Bae, founders, CEO & CTO of TickTock.AI, USA.
  • Henry Hu, founder & CEO of Cafe X Technologies, USA.
  • Alfonso Ã?ñiguez, founder & CEO of Swarm Technology, USA.
  • Gary Marcus, founder & CEO of Geometric Intelligence (acquired by Uber), USA.
  • Brian Mingus, founder & CTO of Latently, USA.
  • Mohammad Musa, founder & CEO at Deepen AI, USA.
  • Elon Musk, founder, CEO & CTO of SpaceX, co-founder & CEO of Tesla Motor, USA.
  • Rosanna Myers & Dan Corkum, founders, CEO & CTO of Carbon Robotics, USA.
  • Erik Nieves, founder & CEO of PlusOne Robotics, USA.
  • Steve Omohundro, founder & President of Possibility Research, USA.
  • Jeff Orkin, founder & CEO, Giant Otter Technologies, USA.
  • Dan Reuter, found & CEO of Electric Movement, USA.
  • Alberto Rizzoli & Simon Edwardsson, founders & CEO of AIPoly, USA. Dan Rubins, founder & CEO of Legal Robot, USA.
  • Stuart Russell, founder & VP of Bayesian Logic Inc., USA.
  • Andrew Schroeder, founder of WeRo botics, USA.
  • Gabe Sibley & Alex Flint, founders, CEO & CPO of Zippy.ai, USA.
  • Martin Spencer, founder & CEO of GeckoSystems, USA.
  • Peter Stone, Mark Ring & Satinder Singh, founders, President/COO, CEO & CTO of Cogitai, USA.
  • Michael Stuart, founder & CEO of Lucid Holdings, USA.
  • Massimiliano Versace, founder, CEO & President, Neurala Inc, USA.

Source: Business Insider
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