Top leaders across the artificial intelligence industry have signed a statement affirming the need to mitigate the risks presented by the technology and stop the threat of "extinction" via nuclear war.
These leaders released the statement on Tuesday in partnership with the Center for A.I. Safety, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the technology's safety. The signatories include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google Deepmind CEO Demis Hassabis, and award-winning researchers such as Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio.
BIDEN NEEDS TO SHELVE TAX INCREASES AND FOCUS ON SPENDING
"Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war," the researchers said.
The statement was also signed by other executives at Big Tech companies, scientists who helped design critical elements of the AI ecosystem, leading computer science academics, and experts on pandemics, climate change, and nuclear technology.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said on Wednesday that he viewed AI-powered technology as an "existential risk" that could get "many, many, many, many people harmed or killed." Altman said in March that it was good for the public to be a "little scared" of ChatGPT.
Altman has pushed national and international regulators to track the technology's development and pass privacy and technological guardrails to ensure that the technology is used safely and not abused by bad actors.
Hinton, considered the "Godfather of A.I.," left Google in early May to warn about the risks of Google and Microsoft's race to improve generative AI products such as ChatGPT and Bard, and he is now focusing on warning about the technology.
A majority of people believe that AI poses a threat to humanity, according to a May 17 Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Congress is already vying to pass such rules. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) has introduced legislation to create a task force investigating AI policies and their effect on civil liberties.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) previously announced he was working on legislation with experts that would regulate AI in a manner acceptable to Republicans and Democrats. Some analysts have argued that this push could limit the ability of smaller companies to compete in the AI marketplace.
The European Union is also considering legislation that would place bans on biometric surveillance, emotional recognition, predictive policing, and other AI-powered products. It would also require AI products to be transparent about the data used to train them. Altman initially threatened to pull out of Europe over the bill over excess regulations but reversed the threat on Friday.