Top officials warn of ‘extinction risks’ from AI

Hundreds of top executives at artificial intelligence companies have called for greater awareness of the potential dangers of the technology. One of them is Sam Altman, CEO of the company that developed the AI ​​chatbot ChatGPT. “Mitigating the risks of extinction from AI should be a global priority, as with other societal risks such as pandemics and nuclear wars,” their brief states.

The Center for AI Security (CAIS), a non-profit organization, published the report, which has been signed more than 350 times. At the same time politicians from the EU and US are expected to meet in Sweden to discuss the possibility of subjecting AI companies to more regulations.

Altman leads the company OpenAI, which is making a splash with its AI platform GPT. Via ChatGPD, for example, it is possible to generate logical-sounding texts with artificial intelligence based on certain instructions from the user. Executives from AI firms DeepMind and Anthropic as well as Microsoft and Google technology groups also signed the message.

Researchers Geoffrey Hinton and Joshua Bengio are among the signatories. They are considered two of the three “Godfathers of AI” because they pioneered research into ways for computers to learn. A third “godfather,” Yann Legan, did not sign the invitation, drawing criticism from his boss, Metta. Meta is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

The rapid development of AI platforms leads to concerns about the speed at which misinformation can spread, among other things. There are also concerns about “intelligent machines” starting to think for themselves. Hinton, who recently left Google, warns of the dangers of machines becoming smarter than humans. He called the dangers to humanity “more urgent” than climate change.