The race for high technology has been called a threat to humanity: it will drag you to the bottom

An MIT professor has warned that the uncontrolled development of firms using artificial intelligence poses a threat to the future of society. In recent years, it has been noted that the growth of AI is becoming exponential.

Technology companies are jeopardizing the future of humanity due to the uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence. The expert called on October 26 that the “race to the bottom” must be immediately stopped and all programs to create powerful AI systems must be paused.

Max Tegmark, a physics professor and AI researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Guardian that the world is now “looking at a race to the bottom that needs to be stopped.” Tegmark signed an open letter published in April 2023, in which he called for a six-month break in giant AI experiments. The appeal was signed by thousands of tech industry figures, including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

“We urgently need AI safety standards to make this a race to the top. AI promises many incredible benefits, but the reckless and uncontrolled development of ever more powerful systems without oversight puts our economy, our society and our lives at risk. Regulation is critical to safe innovation so that a handful of AI corporations do not jeopardize our shared future,” Tegmark told the British publication.

In the paper, 23 AI experts, including two of the technology’s modern godfathers, called for governments to allow development of future models to cease. The main argument of scientists is that powerful AI systems should be developed only when there is confidence that their effect will be positive and the risks are manageable.

The director of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society at the University of Toronto, Gillian Hadfield, has revealed that over the next 18 months, AI models will be built that will be many times more powerful than those already running.

“There are companies that are planning to train models with 100 times more computation than exists now. And, essentially, there are no rules about what they can do with these models,” she warns.

The unrestricted development of artificial general intelligence—a system that can perform a wide range of tasks at or above human intelligence levels—is a key challenge that scientists are calling for to be solved and that governments are demanding strict regulation and licensing.

Why is it worth monitoring the development of artificial intelligence? More and more companies are emerging that can “release” AI into the world without control. Last month, Amazon said it would invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, a startup that plans to collect data on Amazon’s cloud services. The Amazon-Anthropic deal is seen as the e-commerce giant’s biggest move to catch up with Microsoft and Alphabet, which are leaders in artificial intelligence.

Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, the creator of the ultra-popular chatbot ChatGPT and image generator DALL-E 3, following an initial investment of $1 billion in 2019.

Google is keeping up with its competitors and has invested $300 million in Anthropic and invested the same amount in AI startup Runway. The company made this step because it is in the process of integrating AI into its most popular programs in the world: Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs.

“We see this as the most important way to fulfill our mission: organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful,” Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai said in February 2023.

These numbers don’t represent the entire sum of the AI ​​investment boom. Goldman Sachs released a report in August this year predicting that by 2025 there will be large-scale transformation of business and society through generative AI and an overall increase in global productivity and GDP.

“Breakthroughs in this area could lead to radical changes in the global economy,” the report says.

Investments in AI are expected to be concentrated in four key business segments: companies that train and develop AI models; data centers to run AI applications; companies that develop software to run AI-enabled applications; enterprise end users who pay for this software and cloud infrastructure services.

The investment boom compares with a 31% drop in tech startup funding globally over the same time period, according to data compiled for Bloomberg by data firm PitchBook.

Earlier on Tuesday, Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis called for doubling down on regulation to quell concerns about super-human intelligence technology.

Hassabis argues that the world must act immediately in response to the dangers of technology, which includes helping super-intelligent systems create biological weapons.

“We must take the risks of AI as seriously as other major global issues such as climate change. It took far too long for the international community to coordinate an effective global response to this, and we are now living with the consequences. We cannot afford the same delay,” the executive director of the artificial intelligence division addressed the technical community.