Microsoft, Amazon, and Intel are three of the companies mentioned in a new report calling out companies for developing killer artificial intelligence.
The Report
Dutch NGO Pax studied and analyzed 50 companies. It watched out for three criteria: development of technology relevant to deadly robot technology, work related to military projects, and whether or not they committed to abstaining from both in the future.
"Why are companies like Microsoft and Amazon not denying that they're currently developing these highly controversial weapons, which could decide to kill people without direct human involvement?" lead author Frank Slijper said in a statement to the AFP.
Google released guiding principles in 2018 for avoiding the use of AI in weapons system. It was one of the seven companies found to be using the best practices in the industry, according to the new report. Another company in the category is Japanese company Softbank.
Pax found 22 companies that were of "medium concern" while 21 others were of "high concern."
Both Microsoft and Amazon were tagged to be particularly concerning due to their bids on a $10 billion Pentagon contract that's set to give cloud infrastructure for the United States military.
The Pax report also noted that Microsoft employees expressed that they opposed a United States Army contract for HoloLens, which increases the lethality of the battlefield.
"Autonomous weapons will inevitably become scalable weapons of mass destruction, because if the human is not in the loop, then a single person can launch a million weapons or a hundred million weapons," Stuart Russell of the University of California, Berkeley told AFP.
He added that autonomous weapons will inevitably be developed by different corporations and these corporations can play a huge role in a campaign preventing these weapons from being more widespread.
US Blocking Treaties To Ban Killer Robots
Lethal autonomous weapons or killer robots were a hot topic during a meeting of the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in Geneva on Wednesday, Aug. 21.
According to Common Dreams, human rights advocate Campaign to Stop Killer Robots are accusing the United States for being one of the countries that push against a treaty that would ban lethal autonomous weapons systems by requiring "meaningful human control over the use of force."
Other major military forces that are against the treaty include Russia, United Kingdom, Australia, Israel, South Korea.
