More than 50 top researchers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) on Wednesday announced a boycott of KAIST, South Korea’s top university, after it opened what they called an AI weapons lab with one of South Korea’s largest companies.
The researchers, based in 30 countries, said they would refrain from visiting KAIST, hosting visitors from the university, or cooperating with its research programs until it pledged to refrain from developing AI weapons without “meaningful human control.”
KAIST, which opened the center in February with Hanwha Systems, one of two South Korean makers of cluster munitions, responded within hours, saying that it had “no intention to engage in development of lethal autonomous weapons systems and killer robots.”
The university was “significantly aware” of ethical concerns regarding AI, KAIST president Shin Sung-chul said, adding: “I reaffirm once again that KAIST will not conduct any research activities counter to human dignity including autonomous weapons lacking meaningful human control.”
The university said the Research Center for the Convergence of National Defense and Artificial Intelligence would focus on using AI for command and control systems, navigation for large uncrewed undersea vehicles, “smart” aircraft training and tracking and recognition of objects.
Toby Walsh, the professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney who organized the boycott, said the university’s quick response was a success, but he needed to speak with all those who signed the letter before calling off the boycott.
“KAIST has made two significant concessions: not to develop autonomous weapons and to ensure meaningful human control,” Walsh said, adding that KAIST’s response would add weight to UN discussions taking place next week on the overall issue.
It remained unclear how meaningful human control of an uncrewed submarine — one of the launch projects — could be established when it was under the sea and unable to communicate, he added.
‘WEAPONS OF TERROR’
In an open letter announcing the boycott, the researchers said: “If developed, autonomous weapons will ... permit war to be fought faster and at a scale great than ever before. They will have the potential to be weapons of terror.”
They cited effective bans on previous arms technologies and urged KAIST to ban any work on lethal autonomous weapons, and to refrain from AI uses that would harm human lives.
The letter, also signed by top experts on deep learning and robotics, was released ahead of a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday by 123 UN member countries on the challenges posed by lethal autonomous weapons, which critics have described as “killer robots.”
Walsh told reporters that there were many potential good uses of robotics and AI in the military, including removing humans from dangerous tasks, such as clearing minefields.
“But we should not hand over the decision of who lives or dies to a machine. This crosses a clear moral line,” Walsh said. “We should not let robots decide who lives and who dies.”
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
Taiwan’s long-term economic competitiveness will hinge not only on national champions like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) but also on the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies, a US-based scholar has said. At a lecture in Taipei on Tuesday, Jeffrey Ding, assistant professor of political science at the George Washington University and author of "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers," argued that historical experience shows that general-purpose technologies (GPTs) — such as electricity, computers and now AI — shape long-term economic advantages through their diffusion across the broader economy. "What really matters is not who pioneers
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
TAIWAN VALUE CHAIN: Foxtron is to fully own Luxgen following the transaction and it plans to launch a new electric model, the Foxtron Bria, in Taiwan next year Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車) yesterday said that its board of directors approved the disposal of its electric vehicle (EV) unit, Luxgen Motor Co (納智捷汽車), to Foxtron Vehicle Technologies Co (鴻華先進) for NT$787.6 million (US$24.98 million). Foxtron, a half-half joint venture between Yulon affiliate Hua-Chuang Automobile Information Technical Center Co (華創車電) and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), expects to wrap up the deal in the first quarter of next year. Foxtron would fully own Luxgen following the transaction, including five car distributing companies, outlets and all employees. The deal is subject to the approval of the Fair Trade Commission, Foxtron said. “Foxtron will be
RSS