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Gary Marcus said democratic progress would be “very difficult” if artificial intelligence was used to spread disinformation through fake photos and videos
Since the introduction of the poetry-producing ChatGPT half a year ago, expert Gary Marcus has expressed alarm over the lightning-fast development and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI).
But to apocalyptic prophets of AI, a New York University professor emeritus said in an interview that threats to the technology’s survival may be “overstated.”
“Personally, I’m not too concerned about the risk of extinction, at least at this point, because the scenarios aren’t that specific,” Marcus said in San Francisco.
Photo: Reuters
“The more general problem I am concerned about is that the AI systems we are building are not very well controlled, which I believe poses a lot of risk. [but] It may not be literally existential,” he said.
Long before ChatGPT, Marcus designed the first AI program in high school (software that translates Latin to English), and after years of studying child psychology, machine learning was later acquired by Uber Technologies. Founded a company, Geometric Intelligence.
In March, alarmed by ChatGPT creator OpenAI’s release of a newer and more powerful AI model in collaboration with Microsoft, Marcus urged Tesla CEO Elon Musk to signed an open letter calling for a global moratorium on AI development with more than 1,000 people, including
However, he did not sign a more concise statement last week by controversial business leaders and experts, including OpenAI founder Sam Altman.
World leaders should seek to mitigate the “extinction risk” from AI technology, the signatories said.
The statement said that tackling risks from AI should be a “global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
The signatories also included people building systems with the goal of achieving “general-purpose” AI, a technology that retains human-like cognitive abilities.
“If you really think there’s an existential risk, why are you even doing this in the first place? That’s a pretty good question,” Marcus said.
Marcus said society should pay attention to where the real danger lies, rather than focusing on fanciful scenarios where no one survives.
“People might try to use AI to cause all sorts of mayhem and manipulate the market. Then we would blame, for example, the Russians, even though in reality the Russians weren’t. Instead, they might say, ‘Look what they’ve done to our country,'” he said.
“you [could] This escalation could eventually lead to nuclear war or something. So I think we had a pretty serious scenario. extinction? I don’t understand,” he said.
In the short term, Marcus worries about democracy.
Generative AI software produces increasingly convincing fake photos and will soon be able to generate videos at a fraction of the cost.
“People who are good at spreading disinformation will win elections,” he said. “Such people can change the rules and make democratic progress very difficult.” . “Democracy is premised on having reasonable information and making good decisions. How can democracy go forward if no one knows what to believe?”
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