Artificial intelligence was built to make machines smarter. But what happens when they become smarter than us? That question is moving from science fiction into a serious debate among some of the world’s leading AI researchers and technology figures.
Because he believed neither company was acting responsibly enough, the latest warning has come from Jacob Coxon, who announced that he was quitting Anthropic, having previously left OpenAI,.
His stark accusation: AI companies were “gambling with our lives”. Coxon went even further, warning that rapid advances in AI could lead to artificial superintelligence capable of killing all humans “within the next decade”.
However, these concerns are around artificial general intelligence (AGI) rather than normal, specific AI (like self-driving car software).
It could be an extreme scenario, and far from consensus view. But it is not an isolated warning. Elon Musk, an early investor in ChatGPT creator OpenAI, has repeatedly cautioned that increasingly powerful AI could become impossible to control. The reason? Musk worries that AI will soon become much smarter than any human.
He has also said in podcasts and interviews that AI can be weaponised and people can use it to hack power grids, shut down water supplies and design dangerous biological weapons.
