Photo: Canadian Press Agency
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will speak in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday.
A major innovator warned during a visit to the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday that artificial intelligence poses an “existential risk” to humanity, urging international bodies like the International Atomic Energy Agency to oversee this groundbreaking technology. suggested.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is on a world tour to discuss artificial intelligence.
Altman, 38, said: “The challenge facing the world is how to manage these risks and ensure that the enormous benefits are reaping. No one wants to destroy the world. ‘ said.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a popular chatbot, is gaining worldwide attention for providing essay-like answers to user questions. Microsoft has invested about $1 billion in OpenAI.
The success of ChatGPT provided a glimpse of how artificial intelligence can change the way humans work and learn, but it also raised concerns. Hundreds of industry leaders, including Altman, said in May that “mitigating the risk of AI-induced extinction should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” signed a warning letter.
Altman emphasized referring to the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, as an example of how the world has come together to oversee nuclear power. The agency was created a few years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan towards the end of World War II.
“Let us unite as a planet, and I hope this place can play a real role in that,” Altman said. “We talk about the IAEA as a model where the world has been saying, ‘Okay, this is very dangerous technology, let’s all put up guardrails.’ And I think we can do both.
“I think in this case it’s a delicate message because it’s saying that it’s not very dangerous today, but it could be dangerous soon. But we’re going to thread that needle. can do.”
Lawmakers around the world are also considering artificial intelligence. The 27-nation European Union is pushing for AI legislation that could become the de facto global standard for artificial intelligence. Altman told Congress in May that government intervention would be essential to managing the risks associated with AI.
But the UAE, an autocratic federation of seven hereditary emirates, offers the flip side of AI risk. Speech is still heavily regulated. Human rights groups have warned that the United Arab Emirates and other Persian Gulf countries regularly use spy software to monitor activists, journalists and others. These limitations affect the accurate flow of information. This is the same detail that AI programs like ChatGPT rely on as machine learning systems to provide answers to users.
Among the speakers who opened for Altman at the event at Abu Dhabi Global Markets was Andrew Jackson, CEO of the Inception Institute of AI, said to be a G42 company. board.
The G42 is linked to Abu Dhabi’s powerful national security adviser and deputy governor, Sheikh Tahanoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan. G42’s CEO is Peng Xiao, the long-time owner of Pegasus, a subsidiary of the Emirates security firm Dark Matter, which is under intense scrutiny for hiring former CIA and NSA employees from Israel. is. G42 also owns a video and voice calling app that reportedly was a UAE government spying tool.
In his remarks, Jackson described himself as representing “the AI ecosystem of Abu Dhabi and the UAE.”
“We are a political powerhouse and will be the center of global AI regulation,” he said.
