AI Guru Says, “Yep, AI Doom Is Coming.” Have a Nice Day
October 15, 2024
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In science-fiction stories, it is a common storyline for the creator to turn against their creation. These stories serve as a warning to humanity of Titanic proportions: keep your ego in check. The Godfather of AI, Yoshua Bengio advices the same except not in so many words and he applies it to AI, as reported by Live Science: “Humanity Faces A ‘Catastrophic’ Future If We Don’t Regulate AI, ‘Godfather of AI’ Yoshua Bengio Says.”
Bengio is correct. He’s also a leading expert in artificial intelligence, pioneer in creating artificial neural networks and deep learning algorithms, and won the Turing Award in 2018. He is also. The chair of the International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI, an advisory panel backed by the UN, EU, and 30 nations. Bengio believes that AI, because it is quickly being developed and adopted, will irrevocably harm human society.
He recently spoke at the HowTheLightGetsIn Festival in London about AI developing sentience and its associated risks. In his discussion, he says he backed off from his work because AI was moving too fast. He wanted to slow down AI development so humans would take more control of the technology.
He advises that governments enforce safety plans and regulations on AI. Bengio doesn’t want society to become too reliant on AI technology, then, if there was a catastrophe, humans would be left to pick up the broken pieces. Big Tech companies are also using a lot more energy than the report, especially on their data centers. Big Tech companies are anything but green.
Thankfully Big Tech is talking precautions against AI becoming dangerous threats. He cites the AI Safety Institute’s in the US and UK working on test models. Bengio wants AI to be developed but not unregulated and he wants nations to find common ground for the good of all:
“It’s not that we’re going to stop innovation, you can direct efforts in directions that build tools that will definitely help the economy and the well-being of people. So it’s a false argument.
We have regulation on almost everything, from your sandwich, to your car, to the planes you take. Before we had regulation we had orders of magnitude more accidents. It’s the same with pharmaceuticals. We can have technology that’s helpful and regulated, that is the thing that’s worked for us.
The second argument is that if the West slows down because we want to be cautious, then China is going to leap forward and use the technology against us. That’s a real concern, but the solution isn’t to just accelerate as well without caution, because that presents the problem of an arms race.
The solution is a middle ground, where we talk to the Chinese and we come to an understanding that’s in our mutual interest in avoiding major catastrophes. We sign treaties and we work on verification technologies so we can trust each other that we’re not doing anything dangerous. That’s what we need to do so we can both be cautious and move together for the well-being of the planet.”
Will this happen? Maybe.
The problem is countries don’t want to work together and each wants to be the most powerful in the world.
Whitney Grace, October 15, 2024
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