According to reports,The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has formed a partnership with Hannah Systems, a leading defence manufacturer to ‘ “accelerate the arms race” and developing autonomous weapons.
An open letter, which has 57 signatories from 30 countries has been issued to KAIST which outlines that the research institutes will no longer visit or collaborate with the university as it is actively engaged with the development of autonomous weapons.
The letter states, that “It is regrettable that a prestigious institution like KAIST looks to accelerate the arms race to develop such weapons.”
Sung-Chul Shin, who is the President of KIST has responded to the open letter, and has claimed that the university has ‘no interest or intention’ of developing autonomous weapons and he “reaffirms once again that KAIST will not conduct any research activities counter to human dignity including autonomous weapons lacking meaningful human control”
Universities and Research Institutes have expressed concerns of developing AI enabled autonomous weapons, of fear of creating a real world ‘SKYNET’ scenario. For those of you not familiar with James Cameron’s blockbuster hit, The Terminator, SKYNET is an AI program that’s sole intention was to eliminate the worlds population with the use of Atomic, and Robotic war machines.
Elon Musk believes that artificial intelligence (AI) will most likely be the destruction of humanity.
In Geneva next week, the United Nations will host a meeting to look at autonomous weapons and more than 20 countries have called for a total ban on the the development and deployment of the tech.
[su_spoiler title=”About KAIST” style=”fancy” icon=”plus-circle”]KAIST (formally the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) is a national research university located in Daedeok Innopolis, Daejeon, South Korea. KAIST was established by the Korean government, with the help of American policymakers, in 1971 as the nation’s first research-oriented science and engineering institution. KAIST also has been internationally accredited in business education, and hosting the Secretariat of AAPBS. KAIST has approximately 10,200 full-time students and 1,140 faculty researchers and had a total budget of US$765 million in 2013, of which US$459 million was from research contracts.From 1980 to 2008, the institute was known as the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. In 2008, the name was shortened to “KAIST”.
In 2007, KAIST partnered with international institutions and adopted dual degree programs for its students. Its partner institutions include the Technical University of Denmark, Carnegie Mellon University, the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), the Technical University of Berlin, and the Technical University of Munich.
History
The institute was founded in 1971 as the Korea Advanced Institute of Science (KAIS) by a loan of US$6 million (US$34 million 2014) from the United States Agency for International Development(USAID) and supported by President Park Chung-Hee. The institute’s academic scheme was mainly designed by Frederick E. Terman, vice president of Stanford University, and Chung Geum-mo, a professor at the Polytechnic Institution of Brooklyn. The institute’s two main functions were to train advanced scientists and engineers and develop a structure of graduate education in the country. Research studies began by 1973 and undergraduates studied for bachelor’s degrees by 1984.
In 1981 the government merged the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) to form the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, or KAIST. Due to differing research philosophies, KIST and KAIST split in 1989. In the same year KAIST and the Korea Institute of Technology (KIT) combined and moved from Seoul to the Daedeok Science Town in Daejeon. The first act of President Suh upon his inauguration in July 2006 was to lay out the KAIST Development Plan. The ‘KAIST Development Five-Year Plan’ was finalized on February 5, 2007 by KAIST Steering Committee. The goals of KAIST set by Suh were to become one of the best science and technology universities in the world, and to become one of the top-10 universities by 2011. In January 2008, the university dropped its full name, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and changed its official name to only KAIST.[/su_spoiler]
