China's Military Has a New Enemy (No, Not America)

One word: AI – Many of the world's leaders in the field of science and technology, including the late Stephen Hawking, Telsa founder Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, have all expressed concern in recent years over the risks of artificial intelligence (AI) – most notably its potential use in autonomous weapons. Along with many in academia and human rights groups, the science and tech visionaries have warned that in the wrong hands there is a serious danger posed by AI. One concern is that these weapons could be designed to be extremely difficult to simply "turn off," as the Future of Life Institute noted in its report on the development of autonomous weapon platforms. That could result in a scenario straight out of science fiction where humans lose control of their dangerous creations. While it may not mean a world-ending scenario presented in The Terminator, even losing control of a few AI weapons temporarily could result in unnecessary mass causalities or worse.