Off The Grid: Artificial Intelligence the Next Stage of Warfare? Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking Think So.

Tesla's Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and renowned physicist Stephen Hawking - along with more than 1,000 leading robotics experts and researchers - have signed an open letter calling for the ban of artificially intelligent and autonomous weaponry - ie, weapons that can kill "without human intervention," so the letter states. The letter was presented at the International Join Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  

"Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has reached a point 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," the letter claims.  

The letter continues: 

"The key question for humanity today is a global whether to start AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually unavoidable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious. autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow UNLIKE nuclear weapons, they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce 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 controlling populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing, etc." 

What do you think vigilant viewers?  Is Artificial Intelligence the next phase of warfare?  Do you share the same concerns as Musk and Hawking?