Industry leaders say AI presents ‘extinction risk’ equivalent to nuclear war

With the rise of ChatGPT, Bard and other Large Language Models (LLMs), we are hearing warnings from people like Elon Musk about the risks posed by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Now, a group of high-profile industry leaders has issued a one-sentence statement effectively confirming those fears.

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority, along with other societal-level risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.

The post was posted to the Center for AI Safety, an organization with a mission “to reduce societal-level risks from artificial intelligence,” according to its website. Signatories are a who’s who of the AI ​​industry, including Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI, and Demis Hassabis, head of Google DeepMind. Turing Award-winning researchers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, considered by many to be the godfathers of modern AI, also put their names in it.

This is the second such statement in the last few months. In March, Musk, Steve Wozniak and more than 1,000 others called for a six-month pause on AI so that industry and the public could effectively catch up with the technology. “Recent months have seen AI labs race out of control to develop and deploy more powerful digital brains that no one – not even their creators – can understand,” the letter said. can be predicted or controlled reliably.”

While AI is not (potentially) as self-aware as some have feared, it already presents risks of abuse and harm through deepfakes, automated misinformation and more. The LLM could also change the way content, art and literature is produced, potentially affecting many jobs.

US President Joe Biden recently said that “it remains to be seen” if AI is dangerous, adding that “tech companies have a responsibility, in my view, to make sure their products are safe before releasing them to the public.. AI can help tackle some of the most difficult challenges like disease and climate change, but it must also address potential risks to our societies, our economies, our national security. Altman at a recent White House meeting called for regulation of AI due to potential risks.

With lots of opinions, the new, concise statement is meant to show a common concern about AI risks, even if the parties don’t agree on what they are.

“AI experts, journalists, policy makers and the public are increasingly discussing a broad spectrum of important and urgent risks from AI,” the statement’s preface says. “Nevertheless, it can be difficult to voice concerns about some of the most serious risks of advanced AI. The brief statement below aims to remove this barrier and open up discussion. It is supported by a growing number of experts and public figures. It’s also meant to build common sense about some of the most serious risks of advanced AI too seriously.