The founders of 116 robotics and artificial intelligence companies have called for a ban on the use of lethal autonomous weapons in the wake of the postponement of UN talks on regulating “killer robots”.

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and OpenAI, and Mustafa Suleyman, founder and head of applied AI at Google’s Deepmind, are among the signatories of an open letter warning that lethal autonomous weapons would permit “armed conflict to be fought on a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend”. 

“This new arms race has already begun in every sphere of the battlefield — air, at sea and on land,” said Toby Walsh, professor of AI at University of New South Wales and one of the signatories of the letter. “These autonomous weapons threaten to industrialise war and the way we kill people. If they become part of the military industrial complex they will end up being used against civilians.”