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Artificial Intelligence has been described as a threat that could be 'more dangerous than nukes'.

Now a group of scientists and entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, have signed an open letter promising to ensure AI research benefits humanity.

The letter warns that without safeguards on intelligent machines, mankind could be heading for a dark future.

A group of scientists and entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking (pictured), have signed an open letter promising to ensure AI research benefits humanity.

The document, drafted by the Future of Life Institute, said scientists should seek to head off risks that could wipe out mankind.

The authors say there is a 'broad consensus' that AI research is making good progress and would have a growing impact on society.

It highlights speech recognition, image analysis, driverless cars, translation and robot motion as having benefited from the research.

'The potential benefits are huge, since everything that civilisation has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools AI may provide, but the eradication of disease and poverty are not unfathomable,' the authors write.

Elon Musk previously linked the development of autonomous, thinking machines, to 'summoning the demon'

But it issued a stark warning that research into the rewards of AI had to be matched with an equal effort to avoid the potential damage it could wreak.

For instance, in the short term, it claims AI may put millions of people out of work.

In the long term, it could have the potential to play out like a fictional dystopias in which intelligence greater than humans could begin acting against their programming.

'Our AI systems must do what we want them to do,' the letter says.

'Many economists and computer scientists agree that there is valuable research to be done on how to maximise the economic benefits of AI while mitigating adverse effects, which could include increased inequality and unemployment.'

Other signatories to the FLI's letter include Luke Muehlhauser, executive director of Machine Intelligence Research Institute and Frank Wilczek, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Nobel laureate.

The letter comes just weeks after Professor Hawking warned that AI could someday overtake humans.

Space X Founder Elon Musk: AI is our 'biggest existential threat'

Speaking at event in London, the physicist told the BBC: 'The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.'

This echoes claims he made earlier in the year when he said success in creating AI 'would be the biggest event in human history, [but] unfortunately, it might also be the last.'

In November, Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind Space-X and Tesla, warned that the risk of 'something seriously dangerous happening' as a result of machines with artificial intelligence, could be in as few as five years.

He has previously linked the development of autonomous, thinking machines, to 'summoning the demon'.

Speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) AeroAstro Centennial Symposium in October, Musk described artificial intelligence as our 'biggest existential threat'.

He said: 'I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that. So we need to be very careful with artificial intelligence.

'I'm increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don't do something very foolish.

'With artificial intelligence we're summoning the demon. You know those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram, and the holy water, and … he's sure he can control the demon? Doesn't work out.' 

The letter issued a stark warning that research into the rewards of AI had to be matched with an equal effort to avoid the potential damage it could wreak