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Eric Schmidt wants to prevent potential abuse of AI:
Add Eric Schmidt to the list of tech luminaries concerned about the dangers of AI. The former Google chief tells guests at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Summit that AI represents an "existential risk" that could get many people "harmed or killed." He doesn't feel that threat is serious at the moment, but he sees a near future where AI could help find software security flaws or new biology types. It's important to ensure these systems aren't "misused by evil people," the veteran executive says.
Schmidt doesn't have a firm solution for regulating AI, but he believes there won't be an AI-specific regulator in the US. He participated in a National Security Commission on AI that reviewed the technology and published a 2021 report determining that the US wasn't ready for the tech's impact.
Schmidt doesn't have direct influence over AI. However, he joins a growing number of well-known moguls who have argued for a careful approach. Current Google CEO Sundar Pichai has cautioned that society needs to adapt to AI, while OpenAI leader Sam Altman has expressed concern that authoritarians might abuse these algorithms. In March, numerous industry leaders and researchers (including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak) signed an open letter calling on companies to pause AI experiments for six months while they rethought the safety and ethical implications of their work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2023, @07:06AM
Seriously though, most of these so-called risks of AI are not really unique to AI, and have mostly existed before. The issue of automation taking away jobs has been a thing since at least the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It didn't take AI to flood our brains with propaganda and lies: that was happening long before there was even telecommunications. All of these things Schmidt says he is worried about like finding software flaws or new biological types are possible even without AI. What answer does our society continue to collectively give to these issues? We don't fucking care! There are real concerns to the advent of any new technology, but it is not because the technology itself is problematic, but how people will misuse it. These expressions of concern by these tech luminaries seem like just more hypocritical posturing that just serve as a distraction from the real issues that we should be worrying about.