Artificial intelligence leaders have warned in an open letter that this technology could put us at risk of extinction.
A group of leaders of the largest companies active in the field of artificial intelligence has jointly warned that the technology could one day pose an existential threat to humanity and should be considered a risk on par with global pandemics or nuclear wars.
According to the New York Times, the non-profit organization “Center for AI Safety” released a statement in the form of a one-sentence open letter saying: “Reducing the risk of extinction through artificial intelligence should be a priority alongside other major societal risks, including pandemics and nuclear war. be considered universal. This statement was signed by more than 350 managers, researchers, and engineers active in the field of artificial intelligence.
Among the signatories of this statement are Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, and Dario Amodi, CEO of Anthropic. Geoffrey Hinton and Joshua Benjio, two Turing Prize winners in the field of neural networks and often referred to as the godfathers of modern artificial intelligence, also signed the statement.
Danny Hendricks, director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence Safety, says the open letter finally shows who really cares about the future of the technology, and until now has only been talking about it in private. “Even within the AI community itself, there’s a common misconception that worriers are just a small group of pessimists,” he explains. But in fact, many people raise the same concerns privately.”
Sam Altman and other OpenAI executives said in a blog post last week that an international organization similar to the Atomic Energy Agency is needed to regulate artificial intelligence globally. Earlier, another open letter was published by the non-profit organization Future of Life, signed by people like Elon Musk, asking to stop the development of advanced artificial intelligence models.
All artificial intelligence activists are concerned about the dangers of this technology
The difference in this letter is that it expressed a general concern about artificial intelligence technology in just one sentence and refrained from going into details that might be disputed.
This letter is published in a situation where many experts are concerned about the dangerous potential of artificial intelligence. Recent developments in the field of large language models, especially since the public release of the ChatGPT chatbot, have many concerned about the potential of this software to spread false information or threaten businesses.
This issue has made many leaders of the artificial intelligence industry agree with each other and ask for legislation in this field. Altman, Hassabis, and Amodi recently met with President Joe Biden and First Vice President Kamala Harris and talked about legislation in this industry. Altman also went to Congress to speak to US representatives about the same issue.
