Rise of machines: OpenAI warns AI to outsmart humans in most domains
"We believe it would be unintuitively risky and difficult to stop the creation of superintelligence," say OpenAI officials
May 23, 2023
Technology start-up OpenAI, responsible for building artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot, ChatGPT, has said the human-like technology will surpass mankind in most domains and will be more productive, saying it will be unprecedented in power.
The firm also maintained that it is unavoidable.
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) also termed superintelligence, has been theorised by philosophers and academics for years, citing rapid developments in recent years, meaning we may now be on the cusp of it, OpenAI senior officials warned.
In a blog post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever said: "AI superintelligence will be unprecedented in its power – both positive and negative."
The post also stated: "Given the picture, as we see it now, it’s conceivable that within the next ten years, AI systems will exceed expert skill level in most domains, and carry out as much productive activity as one of today’s largest corporations."
“In terms of both potential upsides and downsides, superintelligence will be more powerful than other technologies humanity has had to contend with in the past.”
San Francisco-based tech startup warned legislators and regulators against stopping its advances while laying out three ways to navigate humanity upon the arrival of superintelligence.
The post said: "We believe it would unintuitively risky and difficult to stop the creation of superintelligence."
"Because the upsides are so tremendous, the cost to build it decreases each year, the number of actors building it is rapidly increasing, and it's inherently part of the technological path we are on, stopping it would require something like a global surveillance regime, and even that isn’t guaranteed to work. So we have to get it right."
Last week, Sam Altman appeared before a congressional hearing where US senators questioned him about the risks associated with AI advancements.
Altman told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy that technology and the Law that he believed AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT were a “significant area of concern” and required rules and guidelines to prevent misuse.
One potential way to prevent AI harms like election manipulation would be by introducing licensing and testing requirements for the development of AI, the 38-year-old CEO said.
