Do we need more research to avoid a Terminator scenario? Photograph: ABSOLUTE FILM ARCHIVE

More than 150 artificial intelligence researchers have signed an open letter calling for future research in the field to focus on maximising the social benefit of AI, rather than simply making it more capable.

The signatories, which include researchers from Oxford, Cambridge, MIT and Harvard as well as staff at Google, Amazon and IBM, celebrate progress in the field, but warn that potential pitfalls must be avoided.

The potential benefits [of AI research] 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 letter reads.

Because of the great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls.

The group highlights a number of priorities for AI research which can help navigate the murky waters of the new technology.

In the short term, they argue that focus should fall on three areas: the economic effects of AI, the legal and ethical consequences, and the ability to guarantee that an AI is robust, and will do what it is supposed to.

If self-driving cars cut the roughly 40,000 annual US traffic fatalities in half, the car makers might get not 20,000 thank-you notes, but 20,000 lawsuits, marking one potential legal pitfall. And the ethical considerations involved in using AI for surveillance and warfare are also noted.

But in the long-term, the research should move away from the nitty-gritty, towards tackling more fundamental concerns presented by the field, the researchers argue including trying to prevent the risk of a runaway super-intelligent machine.

It has been argued that very general and capable AI systems operating autonomously to accomplish some task will often be subject to effects that increase the difficulty of maintaining meaningful human control, they write. Research on systems that are not subject to these effects, minimise their impact, or allow for reliable human control could be valuable in preventing undesired consequences, as could work on reliable and secure test-beds for AI systems at a variety of capability levels.

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Experts including Elon Musk call for research to avoid AI 'pitfalls'