Open Thread, Jul. 27 - Aug 02, 2015

MrMind

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

Published 4 hours ago as of Monday 27 July 2015 20.18 AEST:

Musk, Wozniak and Hawking urge ban on AI and autonomous weapons: Over 1,000 high-profile artificial intelligence experts and leading researchers have signed an open letter warning of a “military artificial intelligence arms race” and calling for a ban on “offensive autonomous weapons”.

Link from Reddit front page

Link from The Guardian

I didn't read the letter but did it have a subsection saying something like "and if this creates a future shortage of military manpower we would welcome our children being drafted to fight against the common enemies of mankind such as ISIS"?

-1Jiro11y

I wonder if we'll follow up by seeing politicians propose changes to C++ standards. Even assuming these guys are experts on how dangerous the weapons are, they have no expertise in politics that the man on the street doesn't, and the man on the street doesn't put out press releases. This is no better than all those announcements by various celebrities concerning some matter they have no expertise on, except they're tech celebrities and are intentionally confusing technical knowledge and political knowledge to make themselves sound like experts because they are experts about the wrong link in the chain.

1DanB11y

I like the spirit of the proposal but I fear it will be very hard to draw a reasonable line between military AI and non-military AI. Do computer vision algorithms have military applications? Do planning algorithms? Well, they do if you hook them up to a robot with a gun.