Some powerful people want humans to be replaced by machines, AI pioneer warns
Technology
AI expert calls for timely global policy
(Web Desk) - A pioneer of artificial intelligence has sent out an ominous warning, not about the technology itself, but about the people controlling it.
Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, in an interview with CNBC, said there are some elite tech moguls who want to replace humans with AI, Futurism reported.
Bengio is one of the people referred to as the Godfather of AI. He had earlier also raised alarm about AI and was one of the public signatories of the "Right to Warn" open letter penned by leading AI researchers at OpenAI. They claimed that the technology poses several dangers and they're being forced not to speak about them.
Speaking during the One Young World Summit in Montreal, Bengio said, "Intelligence gives power. So who’s going to control that power?"
"There are people who might want to abuse that power, and there are people who might be happy to see humanity replaced by machines," Bengio claimed.
He warned that while there are only a handful of such people, they need to be thwarted right now.
"I mean, it’s a fringe, but these people can have a lot of power, and they can do it unless we put the right guardrails right now."
"There’s going to be a concentration of power: economic power, which can be bad for markets; political power, which could be bad for democracy; and military power, which could be bad for the geopolitical stability of our planet," he continued.
World leaders need to take steps to control the growing power of AI, even though no one can say for sure when human-level AI might be achieved.
However, if the latter happens before global policy is reached on the matter, it would spell trouble.
"If it’s five years, we’re not ready," he concluded, "because we don’t have methods to make sure that these systems will not harm people or will not turn against people."
Several other experts have also called for controlling artificial intelligence while there is still time.
