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Many top business leaders are seriously concerned that artificial intelligence could pose an existential threat to humanity in the not too distant future.
42% of CEOs surveyed at this week’s Yale CEO Summit said AI could destroy humanity in five to 10 years, according to the survey, which was shared exclusively with CNN.
“It’s pretty dark and disturbing,” Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld said in a phone interview.
The survey, conducted at a virtual event hosted by Sonnenfeld’s Chief Executive Research Institute, found little consensus on the risks and opportunities associated with AI.
Sonnenfeld said the study included Walmart CEO Doug McMillion, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey, leaders of tech companies like Xerox and Zoom, pharmaceuticals and the media. , said it contained responses from 119 CEOs from different sectors, including manufacturing CEOs.
Business leaders are widely divided on how dangerous AI is to civilization.
34% of CEOs said AI could destroy humanity within 10 years, 8% said it could do so within 5 years, and 58% said it would never happen I haven’t,” he replied.
In a separate question, Yale University found that 42% of CEOs surveyed said AI’s potential catastrophe was overstated., On the other hand, 58% say they are not exaggerating.
The findings come just weeks after dozens of AI industry leaders, academics and even some celebrities signed a statement warning of the risk of “extinction” from AI.
The statement, signed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the “godfather of AI” Jeffrey Hinton, and executives from Google and Microsoft, encourages society to take steps to protect itself from the dangers of AI. asked to speak to
“Reducing the risk of AI-induced extinction should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement said.
Hinton recently became concerned about how intelligent the technology he helped develop has become, and decided to raise the alarm about the technology.
“I’m just a scientist who suddenly realizes these things are getting smarter than us,” Hinton told CNN’s Jake Tupper in May. “I kind of want to sound the horn and say that we should seriously think about how to stop these things from ruling us.”
Hinton told CNN that AI would be very good at things like “getting around human-imposed restrictions, if they get much smarter than humans.”
While business leaders debated the dangers of AI, the CEOs surveyed by Yale showed some agreement on the payoff.
Only 13% of CEOs say AI’s potential opportunities are overestimated, while 87% say otherwise.
CEOs noted that AI will have the most transformative impact on three major industries: healthcare (48%), professional services/IT (35%) and media/digital (11%).
As some inside and outside the tech industry debate doomsday scenarios around AI, there could be more immediate consequences, such as the risk of misinformation and job losses.
Yale University management guru Sonnenfeld told CNN business leaders that there are five different camps when it comes to AI.
The first group Sonnenfeld describes includes “curious creators”, “naive believers” who insist that everything that can be done should be done.
“They are like Robert Oppenheimer before the atomic bombing,” Sonnenfeld said, citing an American physicist known as the “father of the atomic bomb.”
And there are “euphoric true believers” who see only the good in technology, Sonnenfeld said.
Focusing on the AI boom sparked by the popularity of ChatGPT and other new tools, Sonnenfeld described “commercial profiteers” who are eager to profit from new technologies. “They don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re rushing into it,” he said.
And there are two camps pushing for some sort of AI crackdown: vigilant activists and global governance advocates.
“All five of these groups are talking to each other with righteous indignation,” Sonnenfeld said.
The lack of consensus on how to approach AI highlights that even industry leaders are still puzzled about the risks and rewards of what could be a real game changer for society. increase.
