A number of high-profile tech entrepreneurs have established OpenAI, Inc. a new not-for-profit company that aims to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) that doesn’t morph into killer robots.

The company launched Friday with $1 billion in donations from tech giants Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, Jessica Livingston and Reid Hoffman and has as its goal the advancement of digital intelligence in a way “that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.”

Although not spelled out directly, the “benefit humanity as a whole” line is a reference to the potential of AI being used for evil (yes, killer robots), a notion Musk himself has previously warned is humanities biggest existential threat and that with AI, “we are summoning the demon.”

“Since our research is free from financial obligations, we can better focus on a positive human impact,” OpenAI’s Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever explained in a post introducing the company. “We believe AI should be an extension of individual human wills and, in the spirit of liberty, as broadly and evenly distributed as possible.”

Sticking with the theme that AI development should be used for good, the pair continued by noting that while the future of AI is hard to predict, whatever is developed should be utilized the right way.

“Because of AI’s surprising history, it’s hard to predict when human-level AI might come within reach. When it does, it’ll be important to have a leading research institution which can prioritize a good outcome for all over its own self-interest.”

Killer robots

You can never mention killer robots enough when talking about future uses of AI, and while to many it may be a fanciful idea picked up from Hollywood movies, the truth is that the concept of killer robots is actually fact, with a South Korean arms manufacturer this year having designed and built a gun turret that’s able to identify, track and shoot targets, theoretically without the need for human mediation; It may not be a robot of the likes seen in The Terminator films, but we are already at the point of autonomous weaponry, and the space will only continue to develop in the years ahead.

In July, more than 1,000 experts and leading robotics researchers signed an open letter warning of a military AI arms race, describing the introduction of autonomous, self-thinking robots as being not decades but years away; the short of it is that it’s not a matter of if but when this will be a reality.

While OpenAI won’t necessarily prevent the rise of killer robots, it may well provide a countenance to them by positioning itself ahead of the field and using what it learns for good versus evil … well, that’s the theory anyway.

Image credit: jurvetson/Flickr/CC by 2.0