As it prepares to open the new Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, a headquarters in The Hague which will monitor developments in artificial intelligence (AI), the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) has explained the need for the new center with a warning that robots could destabilize the world. AI, and robots that benefit from it, pose a range of potential threats to humans: from the standard fears of automation and the mass unemployment that follows it, to more dramatic concerns that autonomous killer robots will be deployed by those with nefarious aims -- or that they will be self-directed, for that matter. It will be the task of the UNICRI Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics to second-guess each possible threat. The Guardian reports that UNICRI senior strategic adviser Irakli Beridze said that the team at The Hague will also generate ideas about how AI advances could help achieve UN targets. His point seemed to be that while there are risks associated with developments in AI that needed to be addressed, there is a bigger picture that the center will consider, as the UN's first permanent office focused on AI. "If societies do not adapt quickly enough, this can cause instability," Beridze told the Dutch newspaper de Telegraaf.