Woz on autonomous weapons: "I don't think it's a good idea. I don't think we can stop it."

This time last year Steve Wozniak was sounding a cautionary note about the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI), warning that computers would one day take over from humans and joking that we might even end up as their pets. In a recent interview with Australia's ABC TV's Lateline the engineering genius appeared more sanguine about the future of self-aware, super-intelligent Artificial Intelligence and much more concerned with the real world killer robots that are all but with us: Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS). The Apple co-founder maintains that human-level Artificial Intelligence won't happen for "a very long time": It might take 200 years before they are really fully able to operate all of their needs in the world, until then they're going to need human beings … I'm not really worried at all. It's very scary to make autonomous weapons that are just following some programmed set of instructions … even when you're driving a car there is no one set of rules … if a lane is closed off you have to do something against the rules … I don't think it's a good idea at all. I don't think we can really stop it.