Ban autonomous offensive weapons before they start an arms race or a war: That’s the demand of the artificial intelligence and robotics researchers who joined more than 1800 people in signing on to an open letter published Monday.

Stephen Hawking, Tesla founder Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak are among the signatories of the letter published at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, which runs through Thursday in Buenos Aires.

They warned that the creation of weapons that select and destroy targets autonomously, without human intervention, is likely to start a new global arms race — something that could happen within a few years, given the current state of AI research.

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