Many industry leaders on Tuesday warned that the artificial intelligence technology they were building might pose an existential threat to humanity one day. The Centre for AI Safety released a one-line statement of the open letter which was signed by over 350 executives, researchers, and engineers working in the artificial intelligence field.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement read.
Some of the signatories included top executives of the leading AI companies — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis, and Anthropic’s chief executive Dario Amodei. The list consists of top researchers who are considered ‘godfathers’ of the modern AI movement — Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio.
The statement came against a backdrop of growing concerns about the potential harms of artificial intelligence. Recently launched AI-based chatbots have increased fears that AI could soon be used to spread misinformation and propaganda, or eliminate numerous jobs in the near future.
US-Brazilian researcher Ben Goertzel, a leading AI guru had stated that artificial intelligence could replace 80% of human jobs in the coming years.
The White House even planned to meet with top executives from Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic earlier this month to discuss the promise and risks of artificial intelligence.
The United States is home to the biggest innovators in tech and AI — including Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which created ChatGPT — but trails internationally in regulating the industry. On the other hand, billionaire Elon Musk in early March formed an AI company called X.AI, based in the US state of Nevada.
The UK government has also invited bosses from some of the world’s biggest artificial intelligence firms to a meeting in May this year, as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak crafted a policy to manage the risks and benefits of AI technology.
Google, Meta, and Microsoft have spent years working on AI systems to help with translations, internet searches, security, and targeted advertising.
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Updated: 31 May 2023, 07:49 AM IST
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