Artificial intelligence poses 'risk of extinction,' tech execs and experts warn

More than 350 top execu‐ tives and researchers in ar‐ tificial intelligence have signed a statement urging policymakers to see the se‐ rious risks posed by unreg‐ ulated AI, warning the fu‐ ture of humanity may be at stake. "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societalscale risks such as pan‐ demics and nuclear war," the signatories, includ‐ ing OpenAI CEO Sam Alt‐ man, said in a 23-word let‐ ter published Tuesday by the nonprofit Center for AI Safety (CAIS).

Competition in the indus‐ try has led to a sort of "AI arms race," CAIS executive di‐ rector Dan Hendrycks told CBC News in an interview.

"That could escalate and, like the nuclear arms race, po‐ tentially bring us to the brink of catastrophe," he said, sug‐ gesting humanity "could go the way of the Neanderthals."

Recent developments in AI have created tools supporters say can be used in applica‐ tions from medical diagnos‐ tics to writing legal briefs, but this has sparked fears the technology could lead to pri‐ vacy violations, powerful mis‐ information campaigns and lead to issues with "smart ma‐ chines" thinking for them‐ selves.

"There are many ways that [AI] could go wrong," said Hendrycks. He believes there is a need to examine which AI tools may be used for generic purposes and which could be used with malicious intent.

He also raised the concern of artificial intelligence devel‐ oping autonomously.

"It would be difficult to tell if an AI had a goal different from our own because it could potentially conceal it. This is not completely out of the question," he said.

WATCH | OpenAI CEO Alt‐ man presses U.S. lawmak‐ ers on regulation:

'Godfathers of AI' among critics

Hendrycks and the signa‐ tories to the CAIS state‐ ment are calling for interna‐ tional co-operation to treat AI as a "global priority" in order to address its risks.

And you don't have to have be an expert — or even have an interest in artificial in‐ telligence — to be affected by it going forward, said technol‐ ogy analyst and journal‐ ist Carmi Levy.

"Just like climate change, even if you're not a meteorol‐ ogist, it's going to touch your life," Levy said, citing the rela‐ tionships between govern‐ ments and citizens, financial markets and organizational development. "AI is going to touch all of our lives."

WATCH | No one will es‐ cape the effects of AI, says Levy:

The letter coincided with the U.S.-EU Trade and Tech‐ nology Council meeting in Sweden where politicians are expected to talk about regu‐ lating AI.

As well as Altman, signato‐ ries included the CEOs of AI firms DeepMind and Anthrop‐ ic, and executives from Mi‐ crosoft and Google.

Also among them were British-Canadian computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton and Université de Montréal com‐ puter science profes‐ sor Yoshua Bengio — two of the three so-called "godfa‐ thers of AI" who received the 2018 Turing Award for their work on deep learning. Pro‐ fessors from institutions rang‐ ing from Harvard to China's Tsinghua University also signed on.

WATCH | CanadianBritish AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton on potential risks:

AI development has reached a milestone, known as the Turing Test, which means machines have the ability to converse with hu‐ mans in a sophisticated fash‐ ion, Yoshua Bengio told CBC News.

The idea that machines can converse with us, and hu‐ mans don't realize they are talking to an AI system rather than another person, is scary, he added.

Bengio worries the tech‐ nology could lead to an au‐ tomation of trolls on social media, as AI systems have al‐ ready "mastered enough knowledge to pass as hu‐ man."

"We are creating intelligent entities," he said. AI systems aren't as smart as humans on everything "right now" but that could change, Ben‐ gio continued.

"Are they going to behave well with us? There are a lot of questions that are very, very concerning and there's too much unknown."

WATCH | The stakes are too high to ignore rapid ad‐ vances in AI:

A statement from CAIS criticized Meta, where the third godfather of AI, Yann LeCun, works, for not signing the letter.

Bengio and Elon Musk, along with more than 1,000 other experts and industry executives, had already cited potential risks to society in April.

Last week, Altman referred to EU AI — the first efforts to create a regulation for AI — as over-regulation and threat‐ ened to leave Europe. He re‐ versed his stance within days after criticism from politicians.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen will meet Altman on Thursday.

AI regulation 'still play‐ ing catch up'

Not everyone believes AI is existential threat, yet.

"I think there are incredi‐ bly pressing practical ramifica‐ tions of AI that affect people negatively, that I think we don't yet have good solutions for," said Rahul Krishnan, an assistant professor at the Uni‐ versity of Toronto's depart‐ ment of computer science.

He believes there is a need for "responsible AI," which in‐ cludes "having a set of princi‐ ple that users and developers of machine learning models agree on."

Krishnan said AI regula‐ tion is "still playing catch up" but there needs to be a "good balance" to ensure technolo‐ gies are developed and used safely without hindering im‐ provements.

WATCH | Could AI al‐ ready be outsmarting hu‐ mans:

However, he sees the po‐ tential for "biases" to affect how machine learning algo‐ rithms are programmed.

He offered the example of AI being used to determine who should be approved for a credit card. If an AI tool is trained to work with data about past lending deci‐ sions that already "have a de‐ gree of bias," he said the algo‐ rithm could further perpetu‐ ate that bias in its predictions.

Luke Stark, who stud‐ ies the social, ethical and cul‐ tural impacts of AI at Western University in London, Ont., agreed. If the data AI systems are using exhibit historical bias around race or gender, it's going to get exacerbated, built up and further ex‐ pressed through the system, Stark said.

"I think it's a real danger that we're facing today and that's already affecting mar‐ ginalized communities. You know, people in society who often have the least say about how computing works and how computers are de‐ signed," he said.

WATCH | Those most ad‐ versely affected by AI should be helping to create AI policy:

Stark, however, believes the warnings about an exis‐ tential threat from AI have gone overboard, at least for now.

"From my perspective, it's these everyday real-world, re‐ al-life cases of contemporary AI systems being used to con‐ trol different groups in society that are not getting as much attention."