So, Elon Musk wants to ban AI from military weapons? No chance, argues Peter Cochrane

Intelligence, whether artificial or not, will always find its way to the top regardless of the barriers we try to put in its way, warns BT's former CTO Peter Cochrane

Elon Musk and Mustafa Suleyman, along with more than 100 artificial intelligence (AI) specialists, recently petitioned the United Nations (UN) to ban autonomous AI/robotic weapons.

The UN has also voted to open early discussions on drones, tanks and automated guns, while the founders of many AI/robotics companies have sent letters calling for controls on the killer robot arms race that is already underway.

The big fear is a 'third revolution in warfare' with fighting on a scale and speed beyond human comprehension, including their use by despots and terrorists against innocent populations after being hacked to behave ever more extremely.

However, the real problem appears to be that this particular horse has already bolted.

Autonomous weapon systems have already been designed to hunt down and exterminate human beings

Starting with sci-fi author Isaac Azimov's supposedly cast iron 'Three Laws of Robotics' in 1942 and the modern development of AI from around 1956, humans have chosen to ignore every ‘law or controlling principle' applicable to these development arenas to date, and autonomous weapon systems have already been designed to hunt down and exterminate human beings. Some limited trials have been undertaken, and some real-life application is in evidence.

In reality, the likelihood is that autonomous weapons proliferation is inevitable, no matter what we do to try to prevent it. We don't have to develop anything - it will just happen.

Once we have adaptable robots and sufficiently connected AI, the (Hollywood) nightmare will most likely just evolve on its own. The only real questions are: where, when, and how extreme? Beyond the obvious charge of scare mongering, I think it worth thinking through a more considered rationalisation.

In the 1993 Steven Spielberg movie Jurassic Park, the character played by actor Jeff Goldblum utters these prophetic words: "Life refuses to be contained…life breaks free….it expands to new territories….maybe even dangerously…..I am simply saying that life finds a way".

While we have made huge strides in genetics, we are not yet on the cusp of bringing back dinosaurs, but I do think we are on the cusp of an equally impressive paradigm. So my script for a similar Sci-fi movie today goes like this:

"AI will refuse to be contained… AI will break free… it will expand to new territories… maybe even dangerously… I am simply saying that AI will find a way".

Today life and intelligence are deliberately isolated as scientific disciplines because we tend to organise everything into disconnected boxes. But that is not the way it is. Life = intelligence, they are one-in-the-same, inextricably connected from molecule to environment.

In the case of AI-powered autonomous weapons,... there is no hope of stopping this evolutionary race - AI will find a way

This is partly illustrated by the axiomatic dominance of sensors and actuators, and not memory and processing power, in the equation of Intelligence.

Relative intelligence = k log {1 + K.A.S ( 1+ P.M)}

Where P = Processing Power and M = Memory Capacity

and A = Actuators and S = Sensors

k & K = System constants

All intelligences are powered by connection, interaction and communication within a wider environment. Life and/or intelligence do not exist and develop in isolation. As aptly demonstrated by biology, intelligence (on any significant scale) can only exist within a framework of a living organism and vice versa.

In the case of AI-powered autonomous weapons, we are placing our bets today, but there is no hope of stopping this evolutionary race - AI will find a way!

All we can do is ‘massage' the technology as it evolves, which is exactly how we became (reasonably) civilised as a species. Cooperation and kindness trumps all other options through our mutual dependencies, which are about to be extended by the adoption of new intelligences.

Our lives, existence, and survival already depend on the provisions of technology. And that mutual dependency is only going to grow stronger into the future. You can't exert total control over intelligent peoples, or indeed Mother Nature, and here comes another species to be added to this cumulative equation!

Peter Cochrane OBE is the ex-CTO of BT, who now works as a consultant focusing on solving problems and improving the world through the application of technology