Terminator threat ‘near’ but it won’t be hasta la vista, baby

SCENARIOS from in which beings with artificial intelligence turn on humans are just “one to two decades away”, according to a former Google chief.

Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google and Alphabet, its parent company, told a security conference in Munich he believed AI technology was developing so quickly, it might soon turn against humans.

Mr Schmidt, now a fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has previously discussed the rapid advances in AI technology and military robotics. He has expressed concern over the “military aspirations” of countries like China and Russia when it came to AI weapons.

China has already begun work on a national AI programme and hopes to become the world leader in the technology in the next decade.

Mr Schmidt warned that Europe and the US lagged far behind the Chinese when it came to resource and investment in the field.

Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, has also voiced fears over the potential threat AI poses.

“If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea,” he said last year.

Howewver, Mr Schmidt argued that the benefits AI brings to technology and medical advances outweigh concerns over the negative effects. And he insisted that “humans will remain in charge of [AI] for the rest of time”.

He said: “Everyone wants to talk about all the movie-inspired death scenarios, and I can confidently predict to you that they are one to two decades away. So let’s worry about them, but let’s worry about them in a while.”

He went on to say that the technology had major flaws and would always be within the control of humans.

He said: “I want to remind everyone these technologies [AI] have serious errors in them and they should not be used with life-critical decisions.”