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- Over 900 public figures signed a statement calling for a halt to superintelligent AI development.
- Signatories include AI pioneers, business leaders, and political figures.
- Concerns over advanced AI include job losses, loss of control, and potential human extinction.
What do Steve Bannon, will.i.am, and Prince Harry have in common? They’re all concerned about superintelligent AI that surpasses human intelligence.
They are among more than 900 public figures from business, tech, the arts, and media who have called for a ban on the development of the technology until there’s a scientific consensus that it can be done safely.
Two of the “godfathers of AI,” Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, are also among the statement’s signatures, alongside business leaders such as Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and Virgin founder Richard Branson.
Bannon, a former strategist for Donald Trump, joins political figures from the left, such as former Democratic US Rep. Joe Crowley, who added their names to the list, which continued to grow following its publication on Wednesday.
“We call for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and strong public buy-in,” the statement, organized by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit, said.
Those concerned about the potential of powerful AI have raised concerns about job losses, the loss of control over AI systems, and the possibility of human extinction. Those concerns have grown in recent years as companies like OpenAI and Google have launched increasingly advanced AI models.
“The future of AI should serve humanity, not replace it,” said Prince Harry in a statement. “The true test of progress will be not how fast we move, but how wisely we steer.”
However, others say AI superintelligence could take decades to achieve and will be controllable when it does arrive.
Yan LeCun, one of the “godfathers of AI” and chief AI scientist at Meta, said in March that humans would be the “boss” of superintelligent systems.
It’s the latest statement organized by the Future of Life Institute, which has published several public statements raising concerns about the development of AI since it was founded in 2014. The nonprofit has previously received financial support from Elon Musk, whose company, xAI, has developed the AI chatbot Grok.
“This is not a ban or even a moratorium in the usual sense,” said Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement accompanying his signature.
“It’s simply a proposal to require adequate safety measures for a technology that, according to its developers, has a significant chance to cause human extinction. Is that too much to ask?”
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