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If you put together two of his statements (below), and to be fair these could be isolated responses taken out of context or rephrased by the journalist. He seems to be saying that he thought:

"autonomous killer robots" were 30 to 50 years or even longer away - but he continued working on the technology and then grew a conscience only when things came a long a little earlier than he expected.

What did he think? that the people of the world would come together to stop making the final step to something dangerous like we have with nuclear and biological weapons and climate change?

> as individuals and companies allow A.I. systems not only to generate their own computer code but actually run that code on their own. And he fears a day when truly autonomous weapons — those killer robots — become reality

> “The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he said. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”




It’s like the Manhattan project. They built it and suddenly grew a conscience when they realized the US government was about to authorize melting hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.


"They built it and suddenly a (small minority of them) grew a conscience..."

Edward Teller didn't lose too much sleep about the moral implications of the use of his research.




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