Abstract:
According to Bloomberg, Andrew Ng, a pioneer in the field of AI, said that warnings from top model developers and researchers about the existential risks of AI are "science fiction" and may not be conducive to ensuring that this technology brings maximum benefit to society.
Andrew Ng
Enda Ng co-founded Google Brain and the education platform Coursera. He said that in the early days of the AI craze, the technology industry stoked fears about the potentially catastrophic harm of AI, apparently to increase publicity and influence regulatory trends.
“I’ve been quite frustrated over the past two weeks,” he said in an interview on Bloomberg Television on Thursday. “This PR campaign is coming back again, probably for a similar purpose.”
This month, the high-profile resignation of former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon brought a long-simmering AI safety discussion into the mainstream. Coxon accused both of his former employers of "betting our lives" as they "race to develop super-AI intelligence." He also said those developing AI believe the technology could "kill us all before the end of this decade."
In this context, AI leaders including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are calling on the industry to slow down the development of cutting-edge models and take more measures to safeguard future development.
Ng Enda worked with Amodai and Ultraman in his early years. AI does have risks, including in cybersecurity, he said. But he believes that concerns about AI causing human extinction are "more like science fiction than science."
He also said the industry could focus on solving some "real engineering problems" to continue improving and protecting the technology, while working to ensure AI can be used for "the many wonderful things it is capable of".
Comments