Regulators have warned that AI is facing its'Oppenheimer moment,' as the world is facing a killer robot arms race. The statements were made at a conference in Vienna Monday as nations are using AI-powered drones and databases to search out targets on battlefields. The Israeli military was found to use an AI dubbed Lavender to create a kill list and Ukraine is using high-powered drones to unleash endless streams of ammunition. 'This is the Oppenheimer Moment of our generation,' said Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg. 'Now is the time to agree on international rules and norms.'

Regulators who want to get a grip on an emerging generation of artificially intelligent killing machines may not have much time left to do so, governments were warned on Monday. As autonomous weapons systems rapidly proliferate, including across battlefields in Ukraine and Gaza, algorithms and unmanned aerial vehicles are already helping military planners decide whether or not to hit targets. Soon, that decision could be outsourced entirely to the machines. "This is the Oppenheimer Moment of our generation," said Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, referencing J. Robert Oppenheimer, who helped invent the atomic bomb in 1945 before going on to advocate for controls over the spread of nuclear arms.

Sitting in a U.N. committee meeting in Geneva earlier this year in a session on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (aka killer robots), I was shocked to hear the American delegates claim that AI-powered automated warfare could be safe and reliable. Not only are they wrong, but their thinking endangers us all. It's the same logic that led to the Cold War, the nuclear arms race and the Doomsday Clock. I quit my job at a young, promising tech company in January in protest precisely because I was concerned about how the Pentagon might use AI in warfare and how the business I was part of might contribute to it. I have seen close up the perils of this unreliable but powerful technology, and I have since joined the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robotsto make sure that AI is used responsibly, even in cases of war.