Andrew Ng, co-founder of Google Mind and former chief scientist at Baidu, has accused giant tech firms of spreading concern about synthetic intelligence resulting in human extinction as a part of a “regulatory seize marketing campaign” to close down competitors from open supply AI.
In an Oct. 30 interview with The Australian Monetary Assessment, Professor Ng mentioned the concept AI may make people go extinct is a “massively, colossally dumb thought” utilized by lobbyists to argue for heavy regulation that might crush innovation within the AI business.
Ng known as out OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, one in every of his former college students at Stanford, for signing a letter in Could warning that “mitigating the danger of extinction from AI needs to be a worldwide precedence.” Professor Ng urged OpenAI is incentivized to restrict open-source AI that would compete with its proprietary fashions.
“There are positively giant tech firms that might quite not must attempt to compete with open supply [AI], in order that they’re creating concern of AI resulting in human extinction.”
Whereas acknowledging AI has triggered hurt, together with deaths from self-driving automobiles, Professor Ng argued onerous regulation may do extra injury than leaving AI unchecked. “I don’t assume no regulation is the precise reply, however with the course regulation is headed in lots of international locations, I believe we’d be higher off with no regulation than what we’re getting,” he mentioned.
Nonetheless, he believes considerate transparency necessities on tech firms may have prevented previous disasters just like the social media disaster of the early 2000s. Better transparency may also assist avert future AI mishaps, he mentioned. Professor Ng warned towards laws imposing licensing burdens on the AI business, saying it will “crush innovation.”
The scathing feedback from one of many world’s pioneering AI consultants counsel giant tech corporations are exploiting extinction fears to keep up their dominance on the expense of open-source builders. Professor Ng’s remarks lend credence to suspicions that anti-competitive pursuits have co-opted the AI security motion.
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