A group of AI leaders and researchers, including Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, have released a statement calling for the mitigation of the risk of AI-driven extinction.
The statement claims that addressing the risks posed by AI should be a global priority, alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war. The statement comes in response to a series of heavily publicized warnings over AI risks that do not yet exist but have distracted attention from existing harms such as disinformation, bias, and the environmental toll of training AI systems.
The statement appears to be a response to Elon Musk’s earlier attempt to hijack the AI risk narrative for his own interests and to position OpenAI as a leader in the field. OpenAI was notably absent from the signatories of the statement, but a number of its employees are backing the statement, while Musk apparently is not. The company is actively positioning itself to influence the shape of any future mitigation guardrails, alongside ongoing in-person lobbying efforts targeting international regulators.
The statement has been criticized by some who see it as adding to the hysteria around AI risks that do not yet exist, and distracting attention from existing harms. Others have accused some of the signatories of simply using the statement as another publicity opportunity.
