World has to urgently address the dangers of AI, warn experts
The world urgently needs to address the danger of AI – and not enough is being done, experts have warned.
A new paper – published six months since the first AI Safety Summit was held in Britain and ahead of the second in Seoul this week – says that progress is still lagging behind the technology and that the world could be at risk as a result. It brings together 25 of the world’s leading experts, including a so-called “godfather of AI” and the world’s most-cited economist.
The researchers note that many governments have made step towards discussing the dangers of AI and introducing guidelines that could help address some of the risks of the technology. But it is not up to the risk that many experts believe the technology could pose, they warn.
That has left us without the necessary research to understand the threats posed by artificial intelligence.And we do not have the mechanisms or institutions in place to stop those dangers, it warns.
Those dangers could be catastrophic, the experts say in a long paper that aims to gather together the state of the art in AI safety. AI systems could gain the trust of humans and influence decisions, helping lead to large-scale cybercrime and new kinds of threats in wars.
That could leave us with a largescale loss of life – or the total extinction of humanity, they say.
“Technologies like spaceflight, nuclear weapons and the Internet moved from science fiction to reality in a matter of years. AI is no different,” said Jeff Clune, a professor in AI at the University of British Columbia who signed the letter.
“We have to prepare now for risks that may seem like science fiction – like AI systems hacking into essential networks and infrastructure, AI political manipulation at scale, AI robot soldiers and fully autonomous killer drones, and even AIs attempting to outsmart us and evade our efforts to turn them off.”
Experts noted that there are vast opportunities to be found in the technology. But they warned that those can only be seized by being responsible about the risks.
Other experts have suggested that panic about the dangers of artificial intelligence could be premature. Yann LeCun – who, like signatory Geoffrey Hinton, is one of the three “godfathers of AI” – has said that artificial intelligence is not yet developed enough to pose a major threat. The paper, “Managing extreme AI risks amid rapid progress”, is published in Science. (© The Independent)