Elon Musk and more than 100 leaders and experts in artificial intelligence (AI) have come together urging the UN to commit to an outright ban on killer robot technology. An open letter signed by Musk, Google Deepmind's Mustafa Suleyman, and 114 other AI and robotics specialists urges the UN to prevent "the third revolution in warfare" by banning the development of all lethal autonomous weapon systems. The open letter, released to coincide with the world's largest conference on AI – IJCAI 2017, which is taking place in Melbourne, Australia this week – warns of a near future where independent machines will be able to choose and engage their own targets, including innocent humans in addition to enemy combatants. "Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend," the consortium writes. "These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways."

In the immortal words of Stacker Pentecost, "Today we face the monsters that are at our door and bring the fight to them! Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!" Think Roombas with machine guns. Elon Musk has thought about it -- he thinks about it a lot -- and he's leading the charge to make sure the robot-filled apocalypse never gets to our door in the first place. Ahead of United Nations talks on the use on autonomous weapons systems in warfare -- drones, walking tanks with guns for hands, that kind of thing -- Musk and 116 experts from 26 nations signed an open letter urging the UN to create a government panel that can advise and warn where necessary. Once developed, lethal autonomous weapons will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend.

Xavier University has launched the Xavier Center for Artificial Intelligence, an effort to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence to improve healthcare. "We're bringing together the major global players in artificial intelligence to focus on technology that could transform the healthcare industry," said Marla Phillips, director of Xavier Health, which runs the Center for AI. "We believe the implementation of AI in the healthcare field is needed now more than ever." Xavier Health, formed in 2008, is a center in the College of Professional Sciences charged with making a difference in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries by building bridges between the industries and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Center for AI is a collaborative effort involving all three of Xavier's colleges – Arts & Sciences, Professional Sciences and the Williams College of Business – presenting new academic opportunities for students across the campus, the center said.

Elon Musk, founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla, speaks at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington, U.S., July 19, 2017. 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.

President Trump has shifted to a more traditional foreign policy for the conflict in Afghanistan, giving the green light to send additional troops but offering no "blank check." Here are the stories you shouldn't miss today: The nearly 17-year conflict in Afghanistan is America's longest war, one that Donald Trump, as a citizen, had long criticized. Now that he's president, Trump said in a televised address last night, that view has changed. The commander in chief wouldn't provide troop levels or timetables for the open-ended military commitment he's approved, but his advisors are seeking 4,000 more troops, a 50% increase, and increased counter-terrorism operations. "We are not nation-building again," he said.

This Tuesday morning, we're still talking about the eclipse, getting a name for Google's latest version of Android and testing the best virtual assistants out there. It'll be on the Pixel very soon. Google loves to make a big splash when it reveals the name for the latest version of Android. But the company is going all out this year, using the solar eclipse as an opportunity to reveal that Android O will henceforth be referred to as Oreo. It makes at least a little sense to tie this reveal into the eclipse -- those iconic photos of the solar event are at least a little bit evocative of Oreos, after all.

The world's leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics experts, including Tesla's Elon Musk and Google's Mustafa Suleyman, have urged the United Nations to take action to prevent the development of killer robots before it is too late. The letter signed by 116 experts from 26 countries opens with the words, "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." Though none has been build yet, conceptually a killer robot is fully autonomous and can engage, target and kill humans without any human intervention. Unlike a cruise missile or a remotely piloted drone, where humans make all the target decisions, a quadcopter with AI, for example, can search and destroy people that meet pre-defined criteria on its own. "Retaining human control over use of force is a moral imperative and essential to promote compliance with international law, and ensure accountability," Mary Wareham, advocacy director, Arms Division, Human Rights Watch, wrote in January.

One response to the call by experts in robotics and artificial intelligence for an ban on "killer robots" ("lethal autonomous weapons systems" or Laws in the language of international treaties) is to say: shouldn't you have thought about that sooner? Figures such as Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, are among the 116 specialists calling for the ban. "We do not have long to act," they say. "Once this Pandora's box is opened, it will be hard to close." But such systems are arguably already here, such as the "unmanned combat air vehicle" Taranis developed by BAE and others, or the autonomous SGR-A1 sentry gun made by Samsung and deployed along the South Korean border.

The globe of Mars, as seen in a mosaic of images from the Viking orbiters. In the Martian north, summer brings a nightly dusting of snow. This surprising scene comes courtesy of new simulations of flip-flopping layers in the Martian atmosphere, which mix more vigorously than expected and produce stormy weather. Though still virtual, the snow shower fits quite well with an observation made by a robot placed on Mars in 2008--and it may offer an explanation for how a very different type of snow falls out of the red planet's polar skies. If the simulations are correct, the summertime snow on Mars happens in bursts that can last for several hours, scientists report in a study describing the find published today in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Bloomberg Government regularly publishes insights, opinions and best practices from our community of senior leaders and decision makers. This column is written by Oliver Tavakoli, chief technology officer at Vectra Networks. We have seen Federal Government agencies express interest in artificial intelligence-based (AI) endpoint security solutions and they are starting to look at AI-based cyber security for the network, but they are early in their process. As marketers and the media blend and entwine artificial intelligence, machine learning and cybersecurity buzzwords into a confusing cocktail of badness-stopping power, government security buyers, like their enterprise counterparts, are swamped with misconceptions and a lack of differentiated product clarity. Some marketing of artificial intelligence promises more that it can deliver today.