AI Executives and Experts Warn of Extinction-level Risks, Call for Global Prioritization
Top artificial intelligence (AI) executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, joined experts and professors on Tuesday in raising concerns about the “risk of extinction from AI.” They urged policymakers to treat AI risks as seriously as those posed by pandemics and nuclear war.
In a letter published by the nonprofit Center for AI Safety (CAIS), over 350 signatories stated, “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” The list of signatories included CEOs of AI firms DeepMind and Anthropic, as well as executives from Microsoft and Google.
Notable names on the list also featured Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, two of the three “godfathers of AI” who received the 2018 Turing Award for their work on deep learning. Professors from prestigious institutions like Harvard and China’s Tsinghua University were also among the signatories.
CAIS released a statement pointing out that Meta, where the third godfather of AI, Yann LeCun, works, did not sign the letter.
The letter’s publication coincided with the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council meeting in Sweden, where politicians are expected to discuss AI regulation.
Elon Musk and a group of AI experts and industry executives initially cited potential risks to society in April.
Recent advances in AI have produced tools with potential applications inareas such as medical diagnostics and legal brief writing. However, these developments have also sparked fears of privacy violations, misinformation campaigns, and issues arising from “smart machines” thinking for themselves.
AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton has previously told Reuters that AI could pose a “more urgent” threat to humanity than climate change.
Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman criticized the EU’s first efforts to create AI regulation as overbearing and threatened to leave Europe. He reversed his stance within days following backlash from politicians.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is scheduled to meet with Altman on Thursday to discuss the matter further.
