Experts and the so-called AI ‘godfathers’ have expressed alarm about the impending hazards AI may bring to people’s safety, privacy, and human rights as it continues to advance at a rapid rate.
A member of the U.K.’s non-statutory AI Council recently spoke out amid efforts being made to regulate the technology by the governments of the United Kingdom, the European Union, and the United States. The incredibly potent artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems may someday need to be outlawed, according to the authorities.
The CEO of the artificial intelligence startup Faculty, Marc Warner, is a member of the AI Council, an independent expert panel that advises the UK government on the AI ecosystem.
A system that is more intelligent than humans and is able to reason, plan, and learn from experience at a level equal to or possibly higher than humans was discussed by Warner in an interview with the BBC.
AGI, he claimed, is much more concerning and requires an entirely separate set of regulations. Insisting that “if we create objects that are as smart or smarter than us, there is nobody in the world that can give a good scientific justification for why that should be safe,” the author makes a valid but unsettling point that humanity’s prominence on the planet is largely due to its intelligence. However, he stated that narrow AI systems, like those used for language translation or identifying bacteria, could be regulated like current technology, while AGI systems have the potential to surpass human intelligence in most tasks, and therefore, calls for sensible decisions to be made on AGI, including strong limits on processing power.
In addition, Warner has signed the Centre for AI Safety declaration, which urges efforts to reduce the dangers of potential AI-caused extinction of humanity. Other signatories to the statement include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, and Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather” of AI who left Google to speak openly about the effects of AI. Yoshua Bengio, another prominent AI scientist and professor said that he felt “lost” over his life’s work.
According to the BBC, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, one of the first laws to control AI, is still going through the legislative process. The implementation of various laws would take two to three years, according to European Union Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, “and we’re talking about a technological acceleration that is beyond belief.”
When it comes to formulating rules to safely manage AI, Europe is ahead of the United States. Leading AI CEOs have called for the creation of regulations to control the potent technology. It is more important than ever for nations like the U.S. to take the initiative if they wish to contribute to the discussion about global AI governance.
