Page 11 - IAV Digital Magazine #581

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Google Brain Cofounder Says Big Tech Companies Are Inflating Fears About The Risks of AI Wiping Out Humanity Because They Want To Dominate The Market
By Beatrice Nolan
A leading AI expert and Google Brain cofounder said Big Tech companies were stoking fears about the technology's risks to shut down competi- tion.
Google Brain was a deep-learning AI research team that merged with the DeepMind division earlier this year.
Andrew Ng, an adjunct professor at Stanford University who taught OpenAI
CEO Sam Altman, told The Australian Financial Review that the biggest tech companies hoped to trigger strict regula- tion with the "bad idea that AI could make us go extinct."
"There are definitely
large tech companies that would rather not have to try to com- pete with open source, so they're creating fear of AI leading to human extinction," he told the news outlet. "It's been a weapon for lobby- ists to argue for legis- lation that would be very damaging to the open-source commu- nity."
In May, AI experts and CEOs signed a statement from the Center for AI Safety that compared the risks posed by AI with nuclear war and pan- demics. OpenAI
CEO Sam Altman, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei all put their names to the public statement.
Other AI heavy- weights have issued several warnings about the accelerated development of
advanced generative AI models, with many urging regulators to act quickly.
Governments around the world are looking to regulate AI, citing concerns over safety, potential job losses, and even the risk of human extinction. The European Union will likely be the first region to enforce oversight or regula- tion around genera- tive AI.
Ng said the idea that AI could wipe out humanity could lead to policy proposals that require licensing of AI, which risked crushing innovation. Any necessary AI reg- ulation should be cre- ated thoughtfully, he added.
Ng did not immediate- ly respond to Insider's request for comment, made outside normal working hours.
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