Call to ban killer robot Pandora's Box

Killer robots, which could potentially become weapons of mass destruction in forms like swarms of microdrones, should be banned, industry leaders say.

Human Rights Watch says killer robots should be banned. Source: AAP

Killer robots - including lethal microdrone swarms - should be urgently banned before a wave of weapons of mass destruction gets out of control, industry leaders say.

Robotics and artificial intelligence experts such as Tesla founder Elon Musk and head of applied AI at Google's DeepMind Mustafa Suleyman are among 116 signatories of an open letter demanding the United Nations prohibit the use of such weapons internationally.

The weapons are on the edge of development with the potential to create global instability, the experts warn.

"Unless people want to see new weapons of mass destruction - in the form of vast swarms of lethal microdrones - spreading around the world, it's imperative to step up and support the United Nations' efforts to create a treaty," Bayesian Logic founder Stuart Russell said.

MQ-9 Reaper drone. Killer robots, or lethal autonomous weapons, should be banned because of the potential scale of destruction industry leaders say. Source: AAP

Key organiser of the letter, University of New South Wales professor Toby Walsh, is launching the joint push at an international AI conference in Melbourne on Monday.

"Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend," the letter reads.

"These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to be have in undesirable ways.

"We do not have long to act. Once this Pandora's box is opened, it will be hard to close."

Element AI founder Yoshua Bengio said the matter needed to be handled similarly to other "morally wrong weapons" like biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

Northrop Grumman X-47B unmanned combat air vehicle. Source: AAP