Artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity, experts – including the heads of OpenAI and Google Deepmind – have warned. Dozens have supported a statement published on the webpage of the Centre for AI Safety. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war” it reads. But others say the fears are overblown. Sam Altman, chief executive of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind and Dario Amodei of Anthropic have all supported the statement.  The Centre for AI Safety website suggests a number of possible disaster scenarios:

• AIs could be weaponised – for example, drug-discovery tools could be used to build chemical weapons
• AI-generated misinformation could destabilise society and “undermine collective decision-making”
• The power of AI could become increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, enabling “regimes to enforce narrow values through pervasive surveillance and oppressive censorship”
• Enfeeblement, where humans become dependent on AI “similar to the scenario portrayed in the film Wall-E”

Dr Geoffrey Hinton, who issued an earlier warning about risks from super-intelligent AI, has also supported the Centre for AI Safety’s call. Yoshua Bengio, professor of computer science at the university of Montreal, also signed.

Full story : Artificial intelligence could lead to extinction, experts warn.