Elon Musk (right) and Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI (Photo by ShutterStock, Reuters, Getty Images)
Fears of artificial intelligence (AI) have haunted humanity since the beginning of the computer age – and now threaten us all from a very unexpected direction. On Tuesday, global tech industry executives, including OpenAI (ChatGPT developer) CEO Sam Altman and Google's DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, signed a petition calling for regulations and an examination of the effects. All in all, it's a brief announcement, saying: "Reducing the risk of extinction posed by AI should be a global priority alongside other social risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."
The petition's introduction reads: "AI experts, journalists, policymakers, and the public are increasingly discussing the broad spectrum of important and urgent risks of AI. However, it's hard to express concerns about some of the most serious risks of advanced AI tools. The following succinct statement is intended to overcome this obstacle and open a discussion. Another goal is to create shared knowledge about the growing number of experts and public figures who take seriously some of the most serious risks of advanced AI."
"Reducing the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority." A senior Google official also signed the document (Photo: Reuters)
The dramatic statement by industry executives joins similar messages from other key figures. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, recently addressed the real risks of the technology, saying that "artificial intelligence is one of the biggest risks to the future of civilization." He said that unlike cars and airplanes, AI still has no rules or regulations governing development.
However, Microsoft founder Bill Gates sees things differently. Gates last month shared the exact opposite of a prophecy of doom—noting that moving to a smart world is positive, as machine learning will know how to perform human work autonomously, giving humans more time to be creative. "The purpose of humanity is not just to sit behind the counter and sell things," Gates said.
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