Apocalypse Now? Why the media are suddenly freaking out about AI
The A I Prompt That Could End the World the New York Times warns ominously Literally that s way too weak a word It s pretty frightening Columnist Stephen Witt writes The A I pioneer Yoshua Bengio a computer science professor at the Universit de Montr al is the most-cited researcher alive in any discipline When I spoke with him in Dr Bengio informed me that he had trouble sleeping while thinking of the future Specifically he was worried that an A I would engineer a lethal pathogen several sort of super-coronavirus to eliminate humanity I don t think there s anything close in terms of the scale of danger he mentioned Yes this is balanced with Meta s AI chief who sees a new era of prosperity but which are you going to remember longer I d wager it s the guy who can t sleep FOX NEWS AI NEWSLETTER DEMS DEMAND 'ROBOT TAX'The Washington Post joins the apocalyptic rhetoric race Will AI destroy us Consider the Nature of Intelligence University of Chicago professor Eric Oliver says The fear about artificial intelligence is not just that AI will take our jobs wreck our politics or degrade our ability to think but something far worse AI will destroy humanity itself Have a nice day What s more Oliver writes various observers fear that once these new AI systems achieve such autonomous intelligence they will attempt to eradicate us as a threat to their survival Particular industry leaders put the probability of such a cataclysm at though the material behind those estimates remains mysterious So there s a in chance that artificial intelligence created by humans of unit will wipe us from the face of the earth Look at the bright side that s a in chance we ll be able to live out our lives Over the last year there s been a positive A I boomlet Check out ChatGPT You can create weird pictures or videos Kids use it for homework not so great but so do their teachers It s fun frantic and non-fattening Elon Musk created his X version called Grok FEDERAL JUDGE FINES REPRIMANDS LAWYER WHO USED AI TO DRAFT COURT FILINGSEvery new system has doomed jobs but spawned greater efficiency The invention of the car all but wiped out the horse-and-buggy business The advent of radio television and the interwebs weren t great for telegraph companies or manual typewriters Somehow society adapted But now we re suddenly in a new darker Twilight Zone It sounds counter-intuitive that since scientists created A I they can t control it And it still makes plenty of mistakes It can transform our broken politics which are increasingly dominated by social media and podcasts Hakeem Jeffries was furious when Donald Trump depicted him with a handlebar mustache and sombrero though at least that was obvious Yet the darker side has started to emerge Celebrities including long-dead figures are reincarnated in creepy strategies As another Post story notes Ilyasah Shabazz didn t want to look at the AI-generated videos of her father Malcolm X The seemingly realistic clips made by OpenAI s new video-maker Sora show the legendary civil rights activist making crude jokes wrestling with the Rev Martin Luther King Jr and talking about defecating on himself One video proved police body-camera footage of Whitney Houston looking intoxicated In certain clips King makes monkey noises during his I Have a Dream speech basketball participant Kobe Bryant flies aboard a helicopter mirroring the crash that killed him and his daughter in and John F Kennedy makes a joke about the contemporary killing of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk Yeah good taste not exactly required I ve watched specific of these and they are unnervingly realistic except for the fact that I have a brain that right now sees them as illogical SUBSCRIBE TO HOWIE'S MEDIA BUZZMETER PODCAST A RIFF ON THE DAY'S HOTTEST STORIESTimes tech columnist Kevin Roose says A I has essentially replaced Google for me for basic questions What setting do I put this toaster oven on to make a turkey melt How do I stop weeds from growing on my patio I use it for interior decorating I ll upload a photo of a room in my house and say Give this room a glow-up tell me what furniture to buy and how to arrange it and generate the 'after' picture We created this Frankenstein and it s starting to act like a monster Yes artificial intelligence was molded by people so it seems strange that its creators didn t or couldn t build in particular safety measures But the dire warnings are reminding several of us of the old sixties protest song You don t believe we re on the Eve of Destruction
