Experts compared the threat from artificial intelligence with nuclear war and a pandemic

Experts are frightened by the dangerous prospects for the development of AI

The risk of human extinction due to artificial intelligence should become a global priority, experts say. Hundreds of technology leaders are urging the world to treat AI as a threat on par with pandemics and nuclear war.

A group of leading technology experts from around the world have warned that artificial intelligence technologies should be seen as a social risk and placed in the same class of priorities as pandemics and nuclear wars.

The statement, signed by hundreds of executives and scientists, was released by the AI ​​Security Center on Tuesday amid growing concerns about regulation and the risks the technology poses to humanity.

“Reducing the risk of extinction due to artificial intelligence should be a global priority along with other societal risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement said. Among the signatories were Google’s DeepMind executives, ChatGPT developer OpenAI, and AI startup Anthropic.

World leaders and industry experts such as those at OpenAI have issued calls for regulation of the technology due to existential fears that it could significantly impact labor markets, harm the health of millions, and use misinformation, discrimination and impersonation.

This month, the man often referred to as the godfather of artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton, who also signed the petition, resigned from Google, citing “existential risk.” The risk was reflected and acknowledged for the first time by the British Cabinet last week – the rapid change of course in government, two months after the publication of the AI ​​white paper that industry officials had warned about, is already out of date, writes The Guardian.

The letter released on Tuesday is not the first, but potentially the most impactful, given the broader signatories and its underlying existential problem, according to Michael Osborne, professor of machine learning at the University of Oxford and co-founder of Mind Foundry.

“It is truly remarkable that so many people have signed this letter,” the professor said. “It really shows that there is a growing awareness among those of us working in the field of artificial intelligence that existential risks are a real problem.”

The potential for AI to exacerbate existing existential risks, such as man-made pandemics and an arms race, are the concerns that prompted Osborn to sign the public letter, along with the new existential threats of AI.

Calls for a crackdown on threats follow the success of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot that launched in November. The language model was widely adopted by millions of people and quickly surpassed all predictions by the industry’s best-informed professionals.

Osborne said: “Because we don’t understand artificial intelligence very well, there is the prospect that it could play the role of a kind of new competing organism on the planet, that is, a kind of invasive species that we have developed that can play a destructive role in our survival as a species. “.