OpenAI's ChatGPT's viral success has fueled an artificial intelligence arms race in the tech sector
Technology leaders, including CEOs of OpenAI and Google Deepmind, have warned that AI may lead to the potential extinction of humanity.
According to dozens of AI industry leaders, academics, and even some celebrities, the possibility of an AI extinction event and how to prevent it should be the top worldwide priority now.
A statement published by the Center for AI Safety said: "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 underlines a variety of worries regarding the
ultimate risks posed by unrestrained artificial intelligence, CNN
reported.
According to AI experts, society is still a long way
from achieving the level of artificial general intelligence that is the
stuff of science fiction; today's state-of-the-art chatbots only "replicate
patterns based on training data they have been fed" and do not think for
themselves, the report said.
Leading names in the AI industry who
signed the statement include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman; the godfather of AI,
Geoffrey Hinton; top executives and researchers from Google DeepMind and
Anthropic; Kevin Scott, among others.
However, the "flood of hype and investment into the AI business" has
prompted proposals for regulation at the outset of the AI age, before any
significant problems occur.
The announcement comes in response to
OpenAI's ChatGPT's viral success, which has fueled an artificial
intelligence arms race in the tech sector.
As a result, numerous
lawmakers, advocacy organisations, and tech industry insiders have expressed
concern about the possibility that a new generation of AI-powered chatbots
may "spread false information and eliminate jobs."
Hinton, whose groundbreaking work helped create today’s AI
systems, previously said that he decided to leave his role at Google and
"blow the whistle" on the technology after “suddenly” realising “that these
things are getting smarter than us.”
The statement originally put
forth by David Kreuger, an AI professor at the University of Cambridge, did
not preclude society from addressing other types of AI risk, such as
algorithmic bias or false information, said Dan Hendrycks, director of the
Center for AI Safety, in a tweet on Tuesday.
Hendrycks
"Society
may address several threats concurrently; it's not "either/or," he tweeted.
"From a risk management standpoint, it would be dangerous to
disregard them, just as it would be reckless to exclusively prioritise
present damages." he added.
