Despite the increasing existential threat that artificial intelligence (AI) poses to humanity, many people remain unaware due to lobbying by large information technology (IT) companies, according to an American scientist.
According to The Guardian, on the 25th (local time), Swedish-American physicist Max Tegmark emphasized the dangers of AI at a recent summit in Seoul. Tegmark explained, “AI models that can pass the Turing Test are warnings for the kind of AI that you can lose control over.” The Turing Test is an assessment that determines an AI’s intellectual capacity based on its ability to communicate similarly to a human being.
Tegmark emphasized, “This is why people like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, as well as many tech company CEOs, are being appalled in private.” Hinton and Bengio are both globally recognized scholars in the field of AI. The Future of Life Institute (FLI), a non-profit organization co-founded by Tegmark, previously argued in an open letter signed by over 1,000 notable figures last year that advanced AI research should be temporarily halted for six months as it could pose a serious threat to humanity.
Tegmark pointed out that underestimating the most serious danger is not a coincidence. He explained that when the first academic paper suggesting smoking as a cause of lung cancer was published in 1955, people likely assumed that certain regulations would promptly be put in place. However, due to the immense pressure from the industry to distract attention, it was not until 1980 that this happened. He explained that a similar event is currently taking place.