New AI alert. A group of business leaders and experts, including Sam Altman, the creator of ChatGPT, and the boss of Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, warned Tuesday in an online statement of the threats of “extinction” to humanity posed by the rise of artificial intelligence.
Addressing AI-related risks should be “a global priority alongside other society-wide risks, such as pandemics and nuclear wars,” the signatories wrote on the website. from the Center for AI Safety, a non-profit organization based in the United States.
Geoffrey Hinton, considered one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence and also a signatory of the forum, had already warned of its dangers when he left his position at the giant Google in early May. Advances in the AI sector entail “profound risks for society and humanity”, he said in the New York Times.
A break or regulations?
In March, billionaire Elon Musk – one of the founders of OpenAI, whose board he later left – and hundreds of global experts called for a six-month break from research into powerful AIs, citing ” major risks for humanity”. Others have asked the US Congress to better regulate research.
The rapid deployment of an increasingly “general” artificial intelligence, endowed with human cognitive capacities and therefore likely to disrupt many professions, was symbolized by the launch in March by GPT-4 OpenAIa new, more powerful version of ChatGPT, open to the general public at the end of 2022.
The American Sam Altman multiplies regular warnings, fearing that AI could “cause serious damage to the world”, by manipulating elections or disrupting the labor market. Last week in Paris, he discussed with President Emmanuel Macron how to find “the right balance between protection and positive impact” of this technology.