Experts Have Come Up With 23 Guidelines to Avoid an AI Apocalypse

It's the stuff of many a sci-fi book or movie - could robots one day become smart enough to overthrow us? Well, a group of the world's most eminent artificial intelligence experts have worked together to try and make sure that doesn't happen. They've put together a set of 23 principles to guide future research into AI, which have since been endorsed by hundreds more professionals, including Stephen Hawking and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Called the Asilomar AI Principles (after the beach in California, where they were thought up), the guidelines cover research issues, ethics and values, and longer-term issues - everything from how scientists should work with governments to how lethal weapons should be handled. On that point: "An arms race in lethal autonomous weapons should be avoided," says principle 18.