The rise of the conscious machines: how far should we take AI?

This is an edited version of The Rise of the Conscious Machines in issue 301 of BBC Focus magazine - for the latest science news, discoveries and innovations delivered to your door subscribe here. Killer robots are a staple of science fiction, but a recent letter by a group of more than 100 robotics experts, including founder of SpaceX Elon Musk, has warned the United Nations about the threat posed by lethal autonomous weapons, and requests that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) as a way to manage weaponry be added to the list of weapons banned by the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. So why is now, when AI is being used for so much good, that they are so concerned about the threat it poses? To answer that we need to understand how we have arrived at where we are today and the rise of the conscience machines. Back in the summer of 1956, the fathers of artificial intelligence (AI) gathered at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, to christen the new science and set its goals.