On July 28, 2015, at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, the Future of Life Institute released an open letter calling for a ban on offensive autonomous weapons. The letter was signed by thousands of AI and robotics researchers and endorsed by prominent figures including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Steve Wozniak. Over time the signatory count grew to tens of thousands.
The letter’s core argument was that “the key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting,” and that “if any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable.” It concluded that “starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.” A key worry was that autonomous weapons, unlike nuclear arms, would be cheap to mass-produce and would eventually reach black markets and non-state actors.
The letter was significant because it came from the people building the underlying technology. By having leading AI researchers state publicly that they did not want their work weaponized, it lent technical credibility to the campaign against autonomous weapons and distinguished the cause from generic anti-war advocacy. It echoed and amplified the demands of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, which had launched two years earlier.
For a general reader, the open letter is an early and influential example of technologists trying to set limits on how their inventions are used. It established a pattern, repeated many times since, in which researchers organize collectively to push their field, and the governments and companies that fund it, toward restraint on the most dangerous applications.