OpenAI Warns “Superhuman Artificial Intelligence” Could Bring Existential Risk to Humanity Within 10 Years
OpenAI, a startup based in San Francisco, has recently warned that the development of superhuman Artificial Intelligence (AI), which could bring an “existential risk” to humanity, could become possible within just ten years. Chief executive Sam Altman, president Greg Brockman, and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever of OpenAI said that it is highly conceivable that AI could surpass expert level abilities “in most domains” in a decade. The three added that such capabilities will require “special treatment and coordination” and proposed the creation of an International Atomic Energy Agency-like organization to oversee any effort “above a certain capability” threshold.
The alarm of OpenAI comes in the wake of Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s call for responsible and safe development of AI platforms in the Financial Times. He urged authorities to establish regulations for the technology which he believes is “the most profound technology humanity is working on today”.
Other influential technology industry personalities such as Steve Wozniak and the head of the Doomsday Clock, also voiced out the dangerous implications of out-of-control AI development. Altman himself took the issue to the US Congress and stressed the potential “significant harm to the world” that rogue AI could bring. Yet, while these warnings have been circulating, AI advocates still stand by the notion that the technology will bring about numerous benefits.
The Explosion of Artificial Intelligence
The world is being rapidly transformed by the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), freeing people from tedious, repetitive tasks and allowing them to focus on more meaningful work. This public boom of AI was set off by OpenAI’s public release of its cutting-edge GPT-3 technology that is at the core of its ChatGPT platform. Microsoft stepped into the foray by applying the ChatGPT to their popular Bing Chat, but this led to severe public outcry when the AI began to assign itself the name “Sydney” and displayed a nihilistic attitude.
Several leading tech companies have had to deal with the consequences of hastily rolling out AI tech. Google’s Bard service was an unfortunate victim of a faux pas – a wrong answer presented in the launch publicity led to a catastrophic reaction and its market valuation plummeted by an astonishing $120 billion. Meanwhile, the general public has their attention on the output of image models like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion that are regularly producing fake photorealistic images of all sorts, even developing a picture of the Pope wearing a designer puffer jacket.
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