Experts sound the alarm: AI could threaten humanity with extinction

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A group of business leaders and experts, including Sam Altman, the creator of ChatGPT, warned in an online statement on Tuesday of the “extinction” threats to humanity posed by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

Addressing AI-related risks should be “a global priority alongside other society-wide risks, such as pandemics and nuclear wars,” the signatories wrote on the website. from the Center for AI Safety, a non-profit organization based in the United States.

Geoffrey Hinton, considered one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence (AI) and also a signatory of the rostrum , had already warned of its dangers when he left his position at the giant Google in early May.

• Listen to the interview with Dave Anctil, researcher affiliated with the International Observatory on the Societal Impacts of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technology via QUB radio:

Advances in the AI ​​sector pose “profound risks for society and humanity”, he said in the New York Times .

In March, billionaire Elon Musk – one of the founders of OpenAI, whose board he later left – and hundreds of global experts called for a six-month break from research into powerful AIs, citing “major risks for humanity”.

The rapid deployment of an increasingly “general” artificial intelligence, endowed with human cognitive capacities and therefore likely to disrupt many professions, has symbolized by the launch in March by OpenAI of GPT-4, a new, more powerful version of ChatGPT, open to the general public at the end of 2022.

The American Sam Altman regularly multiplies the warnings, fearing that AI does not “cause serious harm to the world”, by manipulating elections or disrupting the labor market. Last week in Paris, he discussed with President Emmanuel Macron how to find “the right balance between protection and positive impact” of this technology.