A new report alleges that firms such as Amazon and Microsoft are putting the world at risk through the development of killer robots and deadly AI.
The International Business Times reports that a new study by Dutch NGO Pax questioned why so many modern tech companies are developing military-related software that could lead to the death of humans. The report from the Dutch NGO ranked 50 companies by three criteria, whether they were actively developing technology related to deadly AI, working on military projects, or were abstaining form contributing to such projects in the future.
The report notes that Amazon and Microsoft were found to be part of a “high concern” category due to the company’s bidding on Pentagon defense projects.
“Autonomous weapons will inevitably become scalable weapons of mass destruction, because if the human is not in the loop, then a single person can launch a million weapons or a hundred million weapons,” Stuart Russell, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley told AFP on Wednesday.
“The fact is that autonomous weapons are going to be developed by corporations, and in terms of a campaign to prevent autonomous weapons from becoming widespread, they can play a very big role,” he added.
A researcher on the project discussed what the future of “deadly AI” may look like, stating:
More worrying still are new categories of autonomous weapons that don’t yet exist — these could include armed mini-drones like those featured in the 2017 short film “Slaughterbots.”
“With that type of weapon, you could send a million of them in a container or cargo aircraft — so they have destructive capacity of a nuclear bomb but leave all the buildings behind,” said Russell.
Read the full report in the International Business Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com