Thousands of AI researchers just issued a warning about killer robots!

Elon Musk and Stephen Hawkins are among those expressing serious concerns.

BOSTON, Massachusetts (PNN) - July 27, 2015 - More than a thousand artificial-intelligence researchers have cosigned an open letter calling for a ban on autonomous weapons, or "killer robots".

They have been joined by hundreds more sympathetic signatories from outside the industry - including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, scientist Stephen Hawking, and social theorist Noam Chomsky.

Autonomous weapons capable of attacking targets without human intervention don't yet exist, but that hasn't prevented fierce debate about their potential creation and use.

Opponents fear that their invention would have extremely dangerous consequences for humanity, would be liable to misuse, and raise difficult ethical questions.

"Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a point," the letter, published by the Future of Life Institute, reads, "where the deployment of such systems is - practically if not legally - feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high: autonomous weapons have been described as the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms."

It goes on to describe them as the "Kalashnikovs of tomorrow," warning, "They will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce." The consequences of this will be dire. "It will only be a matter of time until they appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populations, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc. Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations, and selectively killing a particular ethnic group."

The letter cautions, "If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable."

As such, it urges international preemptive action against the technology, concluding, "We believe that AI has great potential to benefit humanity in many ways, and that the goal of the field should be to do so. Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control."

Other notable signatories to the letter include philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, Skype cofounder Jaan Talinn, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis (along with 39 other Google employees).

In April, the fascist British government refused to back a ban on building killer robots. A representative said, "At present, we do not see the need for a prohibition on the use of Laws  [Lethal autonomous weapons systems], as international humanitarian law already provides sufficient regulation for this area. The (Fascist) United Kingdom is not developing lethal autonomous weapons systems, and the operation of weapons systems by the (F)UK armed forces will always be under human oversight and control."