The risk from robot weapons

One of the greatest risks of the next few decades is likely to come from robotic weapons, AI (artificial intelligence) weapons, or lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs). In August 2017 as many as 116 specialists from 26 countries, including some of the world's leading robotics and artificial intelligence pioneers, called on the United Nations to ban the development and use of killer robots. They even said that this arms race threatens to usher in the'third revolution' in warfare after gunpowder and nuclear arms. They wrote, "Once developed lethal autonomous weapons will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at time scales faster than humans can comprehend. These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent population, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways."