AI Experts Issue Warning About 'Extinction' Risk

Updated May 31, 2023

• AI experts, policymakers, and public figures have signed a statement published by the Center for AI Safety, emphasizing the need to address the risk of global extinction caused by artificial intelligence. 
• The signatories include CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman, neuroscientist Sam Harris, cryptologist Martin Hellman, computer scientist and ‘godfather of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton, musician Grimes, and more.
• The statement read: 

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

What’s the story?

• The “godfather of AI,” Geoffrey Hinton, left his role at Google, where he worked as an artificial intelligence pioneer for over a decade, so that he could speak freely about the risk of the up-and-coming technology. 
• On Monday, Hinton officially joined a growing group of critics speaking out against AI, saying developers are moving toward dangerous territories. The experts are calling out companies like Google for their aggressive campaigns to create products based on generative AI, like ChatGPT. Hinton fears the race may heighten until it’s impossible to stop. 

What are Hinton and others saying?

• Many industry insiders say these new systems could lead to world-altering breakthroughs, similar to the introduction of the web browser in the 1990s. They believe the impact will be so significant that it will risk jobs, information safety, democracy, and even humanity. 
• Hinton, who built the system that led to the creation of ChatGPT, even went so far as to say he regrets his life's work. He believes that as the AI systems improve, they'll become increasingly dangerous. He said:

“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have…It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.”

What are they scared of? 

Cyberattacks

• Developers fear that with the correct prompts, AI will be able to generate code with malicious intent and create more and more cyberattacks.

Scams

• Regulators are concerned that bad actors will be able to use social media to gather personal information and create AI-assisted phishing and fraud schemes that successfully fake the voices/tones of friends and family.

Disinformation

• Many experts foresee propaganda and deepfakes increasing as algorithms optimize the text, speech, and video available, making it impossible for the public to differentiate between fact and fiction, which will immensely impact society.  

Surveillance

• AI can supercharge tracking from America’s 70 million CCTV cameras for corporations and government use, raising concerns about enabling behavior predictions on a mass scale. Elizabeth Kerley of the International Forum for Democratic Studies said this creates an opportunity for “incentivizing conformity, and penalizing dissent.”
• This mass data collection could also allow AI to anticipate social uproar and bypass democratic debates. Hinton said this could become an issue as individuals and companies allow AI to run its own code and have the potential to turn into autonomous weapons.

What’s next?

• After OpenAI released the newest version of ChatGPT in March, over 1,000 technology leaders and researchers signed a letter urging for a six-month moratorium on the development of AI systems because they pose “profound risks to society and humanity.” Around the same time, 19 leaders of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence released their own letter warning of the danger of AI. 
• Many are pushing for regulation around AI. Seth Dobrin, president of the Responsible AI Institute, says the technology needs an agency similar to the Food and Drug Administration.
• Hinton believes the best solution, for now, is to have the world’s leading scientists collaborate on technology development and control. He said:

“I don’t think they should scale this up more until they have understood whether they can control it.”

Do you think there should be a six-month moratorium on AI development?

-Jamie Epstein