Elon Musk Warns: Future Wars Will Be Fought by Autonomous Drones and AI

Elon Musk: Future wars will be fought by drones and AI.

“The biggest effect [of warfare's transformation] by far is AI and drones. The current war in Ukraine is very much a drone war already. If there's a major power war, it's very much going to be a drone war. It's going to be drones and AI.

I do worry about the existential risk of AI, which is that if you employ AI and drones, do you go down this path where eventually you get to Terminator? We should try to avoid that and minimize the Terminator risk.

[But] when you're making military drones, you are making Terminators. [In fact,] I think you'll somewhat be forced into giving the drone localized AI, because if the AI is far away, it can't control as well as a localized AI.

Meaning [the robot is] an autonomous killing machine. You give it the okay in a particular arena, and it just goes.”

West Point Military Academy, August 9, 2024