With the development of AI, many people are concerned with the safety of the tech. Today, at the Joint Conference of Artifical Intelligence, a pledge was made. Around 2,400 people and 160 companies signed a pledge. The pledge stated that “The tech will not be used or supported to make, develop or trade lethal autonomous weapons”. The pledge included people and companies from 90 companies and has asked the governments to pass such law. Most notable people/companies to have signed the pledge are Google’s DeepMind, Elon Musk and Xprize Foundation.
Why Was A Pledge Signed?
Many tech giants using the AI tech have been at the receiving end for their developing products. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and such were targeted by the audience. Google started its Project Maven Pentagon which is used to provide AI assistance for the military. It helps them flag drone through human review. Amazon used the Facial Recognition Technology with law agencies and Microsoft provided the AI tools to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Due to all the risks, such a pledge was made to make sure there are no autonomous weapons made on the tech which can function without any human intervention.
The pledge explicitly stated that “The decision to take a human life should never be allowed to be done by the machine itself. Selecting targets without human intervention should be prevented at any cost”.
Hence, the world’s largest meet of AI researchers is more concerned on the issue. The politicians were not able to do such and failed multiple times. But this time, all the researchers and leaders have made the pledge. Max Tegmark, President of Life Institute said that “It is good knowing that the researchers and leaders are more concerned with it. AI is powerful and it can help build the world better or destroy it. Hence, keeping it safe and within the limit is important”.
Verdict
Today, the pledge was published officially in Stockholm. It was organized by Future Of Life Institute which aims to prevent risks to human existence. The institute was linked with United Nations asking them to pass some law regarding the issue. However, this is the first time, individuals or companies have come forward for following a law made by them. Max remarked the move as “Shifting from Talk to Action”.
However, this is no reaction from the international regulations for such weapons. An official law is not yet passed which the Future Of Life Institue is trying for so long. The idea of making AI weapons is already spread in most of the countries. However, it should have a part of human intervention before it can engage. For example, a gun can aim at the enemy but it should not pull the trigger unless the human asks it to do so.
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Hence, it is very clear that the companies are not going to stop building AI weapons. However, with the new pledge, the weapons will be kept under a limit which is very well required.
