How Could A.I. Destroy Humanity? (Published 2023) – The New York Times
Artificial Intelligence
Advertisement
Supported by
Researchers and industry leaders have warned that A.I. could pose an existential risk to humanity. But they’ve been light on the details.
Cade Metz has spent years covering the realities and myths of A.I.
Last month, hundreds of well-known people in the world of artificial intelligence signed an open letter warning that A.I. could one day destroy humanity.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the one-sentence statement said.
The letter was the latest in a series of ominous warnings about A.I. that have been notably light on details. Today’s A.I. systems cannot destroy humanity. Some of them can barely add and subtract. So why are the people who know the most about A.I. so worried?
One day, the tech industry’s Cassandras say, companies, governments or independent researchers could deploy powerful A.I. systems to handle everything from business to warfare. Those systems could do things that we do not want them to do. And if humans tried to interfere or shut them down, they could resist or even replicate themselves so they could keep operating.
“Today’s systems are not anywhere close to posing an existential risk,” said Yoshua Bengio, a professor and A.I. researcher at the University of Montreal. “But in one, two, five years? There is too much uncertainty. That is the issue. We are not sure this won’t pass some point where things get catastrophic.”
The worriers have often used a simple metaphor. If you ask a machine to create as many paper clips as possible, they say, it could get carried away and transform everything — including humanity — into paper clip factories.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Advertisement
