Tech leaders including Elon Musk and the cofounders of DeepMind signed a pledge last week to never develop "lethal autonomous weapons."
The letter argued that morally the decision to take a life should never be delegated to a machine and that automated weaponry could be disastrous.
An Oxford academic, Dr. Mariarosaria Taddeo, told Business Insider that while the pledge's intentions were good, it missed the real threat posed by artificial intelligence in warfare.
She believes the deployment of AI in cybersecurity has flown under the radar — with potentially damaging consequences.