UN Warns of Negative Impact Of Intelligent Weapons

World’s top leaders of artificial intelligence and robotics signed an open letter Monday that warns disastrous consequences of "Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems," or intelligent weapons.

"As companies building the technologies in artificial intelligence and robotics that may be repurposed to develop autonomous weapons, we feel especially responsible in raising this alarm," said the letter, released when the UN's Conference of the Conventional Weapons was scheduled to meet to discuss the subject.

The letter's signatories included major players in the industry, including SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Mustafa Suleyman, who founded Google's DeepMind and heads its applied AI unit, Deutsche Welle German Radio reported.

The signatories urged the UN to work hard at "finding means to prevent an arms race in these weapons, to protect civilians from their misuse and to avoid destabilizing effects of these technologies".

"These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways," said the open letter published Sunday.