AI ‘godfather’ wants military prevented from using artificial intelligence claiming safety has not been prioritized
AN ARTIFICIAL Intelligence expert has expressed concern over the military’s use of the technology.
Professor Yoshua Bengio from Université de Montréal – one of three so-called “godfathers” of artificial intelligence (AI) – told the BBC that militaries shouldn’t be able to use AI.
Bengio, known for his early work developing AI, thinks that the speed at which the technology is evolving is worrisome.
One of his primary concerns is with threat actors getting ahold of military-grade AI.
“It might be military, it might be terrorists, it might be somebody very angry, psychotic,” Bengio told the BBC.
“And so if it’s easy to program these AI systems to ask them to do something very bad, this could be very dangerous,” he added.
“If they’re smarter than us, then it’s hard for us to stop these systems or to prevent damage,” Bengio continued.
Earlier this week, the Canadian computer scientist told the National Post that leaders need to move “as quickly as possible” to pass AI regulation bills.
To emphasize the urgency of the issue, Bengio signed two recent statements deeming AI as dangerous.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” reads one of the statements signed by Bengio, the CEOs of OpenAI and Google Deepmind, and others.
The professor cited the recent evolution of OpenAI’s ChatGPT as an example of rapidly growing, sophisticated AI.
“We have reached a level of intelligence of these systems, with ChatGPT last November, which corresponds to essentially being able to pass for human,” Bengio said in an interview.
ChatGPT is a natural language chatbot that can answer prompts, write essays, and even generate complex code in seconds.
And the technology can be used by bad actors to bring disinformation to the masses or to even destabilize democracy, Bengio warned.
“There’s already information suggesting that countries have been trying to influence our [elections],” he said.
“Countries have already been using trolls to try to influence people, but behind each troll account, there’s a human. Now, if we can do the same kind of thing with a machine, then your 100 trolls can control millions of accounts,” he added.
Bengio is not the only industry leader to voice his concerns over AI and its future implications on society.
Fellow “godfather” Dr. Geoffrey Hinton also signed the same statements as Bengio.
Meanwhile, Twitter and Tesla owner Elon Musk has long voiced his concerns over AI.
In an interview with Fox News in April, Musk warned that AI could lead to “civilization destruction.”