On Tuesday, a collective of industry frontrunners plans to express their concern about the potential implications of artificial intelligence technology, which they have a hand in developing. They suggest that it could potentially pose significant challenges to society, paralleling the severity of pandemics and nuclear conflicts.
The anticipated statement from the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit organization, will call for a global focus on minimizing potential challenges from AI. This aligns it with other significant societal issues, such as pandemics and nuclear war. Over 350 AI executives, researchers, and engineers have signed this open letter.
Signatories include chief executives from leading AI companies such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei.
In addition, Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, two Turing Award-winning researchers for their pioneering work on neural networks, have signed the statement, along with other esteemed researchers. Yann LeCun, the third Turing Award winner, who leads Meta’s AI research efforts, had not signed as of Tuesday.
This statement arrives amidst escalating debates regarding the potential consequences of artificial intelligence. Innovations in large language models, as employed by ChatGPT and other chatbots, have sparked concerns about the misuse of AI in spreading misinformation or possibly disrupting numerous white-collar jobs.
While the specifics are not always elaborated, some in the field argue that unmitigated AI developments could lead to societal-scale disruptions in the not-so-distant future.
Interestingly, these concerns are echoed by many industry leaders, placing them in the unique position of suggesting tighter regulations on the very technology they are working to develop and advance.
In an attempt to address these concerns, Altman, Hassabis, and Amodei recently engaged in a conversation with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the topic of AI regulation. Following this meeting, Altman emphasized the importance of government intervention to mitigate the potential challenges posed by advanced AI systems.
In an interview, Dan Hendrycks, executive director of the Center for AI Safety, suggested that the open letter represented a public acknowledgment from some industry figures who previously only privately expressed their concerns about potential risks associated with AI technology development.
While some critics argue that current AI technology is too nascent to pose a significant threat, others contend that the rapid progress of AI has already exceeded human performance in some areas. These proponents believe that the emergence of “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI, an AI capable of performing a wide variety of tasks at or beyond human-level performance, may not be too far off.
In a recent blog post, Altman, along with two other OpenAI executives, proposed several strategies to manage powerful AI systems responsibly. They proposed increased cooperation among AI developers, further technical research into large language models, and the establishment of an international AI safety organization akin to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Furthermore, Altman has endorsed regulations requiring the developers of advanced AI models to obtain a government-issued license.
Earlier this year, over 1,000 technologists and researchers signed another open letter advocating for a six-month halt on the development of the largest AI models. They cited fears about an unregulated rush to develop increasingly powerful digital minds.
The new statement from the Center for AI Safety is brief, aiming to unite AI experts who share general concerns about powerful AI systems, regardless of their views on specific risks or prevention strategies.
Geoffrey Hinton, a high-profile AI expert, recently left his position at Google to openly discuss potential AI implications. The statement has since been circulated and signed by some employees at major AI labs.
The recent increased use of AI chatbots for entertainment, companionship, and productivity, combined with the rapid advancements in the underlying technology, has amplified the urgency of addressing these concerns.
Altman emphasized this urgency in his Senate subcommittee testimony, saying, “We want to work with the government to prevent [potential challenges].”