Sam Altman The OpenAI CEO recently said China should play a key role in shaping the guardrails put in place around technology.
“China has the best AI talent in the world,” Altman said in a speech at the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) last week. “To solve the coordination of advanced AI systems, we need talented people from all over the world. Therefore, we sincerely hope that Chinese AI researchers will make great contributions here.”
Altman is in a good position to voice his opinion on these issues. His company powers his ChatGPT, a chatbot that showed the world how rapidly AI capabilities are advancing. These advances have pushed scientists and engineers to push the limits of technology. In March, a number of experts signed an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on developing AI algorithms stronger than those underpinning ChatGPT. Last month, executives including Altman and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis issued a statement warning that AI could one day pose an existential risk comparable to nuclear war or a pandemic. signed.
Statements like this can feel hollow, often signed by executives working on technology warning them they could kill us. Some miss the point. Many AI experts say it is more important to focus on the harm AI can already do by amplifying social prejudices and facilitating the spread of misinformation.
BAAI chairman Zhang Hongjiang said Chinese AI researchers are also deeply concerned about the emergence of new capabilities in AI. “I really think so [Altman] By conducting this tour and interacting with various governments and institutions, we are doing a service to humanity,” he said.
Zhang said many Chinese scientists, including the director of BAAI, have signed a letter calling for a moratorium on developing more powerful AI systems, but BAAI has long focused on more pressing AI risks. I pointed out that I have been guessing. New developments in AI “no doubt there will be more efforts to tune AI,” Zhang said. But he added that the problem is also difficult because “smart models can actually make things safer.”
Altman wasn’t the only Western AI expert to attend the BAAI conference.
Also present was Jeffrey Hinton, one of the pioneers of deep learning, the technology that underpins all modern AI. He left Google last month to warn people about the risks that increasingly sophisticated algorithms could soon pose.
Max Tegmark, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and director of the Future of Life Institute, who organized the letter calling for a moratorium on AI development, also spoke about the risks of AI, and another deep learning pioneer, Yang Lecan suggested: Current warnings about AI risks may be a bit of an exaggeration.
Regardless of where you stand on the doomsday debate, there is something good about the US and China sharing their views on AI. The usual rhetoric revolves around nation-state struggles to control the development of technology, and it can sometimes seem as if AI is hopelessly embroiled in politics. For example, FBI Director Christopher Wray said at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January that he was “deeply concerned” about the Chinese government’s AI program.
Given the vital importance of AI to economic growth and strategic advantage, it is not surprising that international competition will emerge. But no one will benefit from developing this technology in an insecure way, and the rise of AI will require some degree of cooperation between the United States, China and other world powers.
But as with the development of any other “world-changing” technology, such as nuclear power or the tools needed to combat climate change, it’s up to the scientists who understand the technology best to find some common ground. may be entrusted.
