UC Berkeley professor's eerie lethal drone video goes viral

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UC Berkeley professor Stuart Russell and the Future of Life Institute have created an eerie viral video titled "Slaughterbots" that depicts a future in which humans develop small, hand-sized drones that are programmed to identify and eliminate designated targets.

In the video above, the technology is initially developed with the intention of combating crime and terrorism, but the drones are taken over by an unknown forces who use the powerful weapons to murder a group of senators and college students. The video does contain some graphic content, and was originally uploaded to YouTube.

Russell, an expert on artificial intelligence, appears at the end of the video and warns against humanity's development of autonomous weapons.

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"This short film is just more than speculation," Russell says. "It shows the results of integrating and militarizing technologies that we already have."































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The Future of Life Institute released the video to put pressure on diplomats attending the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva, Switzerland this week. The video was screened on the first day of the convention.

At the conclusion of the meeting, India's disarmament ambassador, Amandeep Gill told concerned AI experts that "humans are still in charge."

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have news for you: the robots are not taking over the world. Humans are still in charge," Gill said.

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In 2015, Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and thousands of AI and robotics experts penned a letter calling for a ban on autonomous weapons. The letter states that the deployment of autonomous weapons will be "feasible within years."

"Allowing machines to choose to kill humans will be devastating to our security and freedom," Russell said. "We have an opportunity to prevent the future you just saw, but the window to act is closing fast."