AI risks leading humanity to 'extinction,' experts warn

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Many of the biggest names in artificial intelligence have signed a short statement warning that their technology could spell the end of the human race.

Published Tuesday, the full statement states: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

The statement was posted to the website of the Center for AI Safety, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization. It’s signed by almost 400 people, including some of the biggest names in the field — Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, as well as top AI executives from Google and Microsoft and 200 academics.

The statement is the most recent in a series of alarms raised by AI experts — but also one that stoked growing pushback against a focus on what some see as overhyped hypothetical harms from AI.

Meredith Whittaker, president of the encrypted messaging app Signal and chief adviser to the AI Now Institute, a nonprofit group devoted to ethical AI practices, mocked the statement as tech leaders overpromising their product.

Clément Delangue, co-founder and CEO of the AI company Hugging Face, tweeted a picture of an edited version of the statement subbing in "AGI" for AI.

AGI stands for artificial general intelligence, which is a theoretical form of AI that is as capable or more capable than humans.

The statement comes two months after a different group of AI and tech leaders, including Tesla owner Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and IBM chief scientist Grady Booch, signed a petition calling for a “pause“ on all large-scale AI research that was open to the public. None of them have yet signed the new statement, and such a pause has not happened.

While the White House has announced some plans to address AI, there is no indication that the United States has imminent plans for large-scale regulation of the industry.