AI company CEOs, scientists call for the technology to be treated like pandemic, nuclear war

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Heads of Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies, scientists in the technology, and other prominent individuals have presented their strongest caution over the treatment of the new space.

A statement signed on the Centre For AI Safety said as follows

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.

Signatories included are those the chief executives of companies such as Google’s DeepMind, ChatGPT developer OpenAI, and AI startup Anthropic.

They warn that AI now poses the greatest risk, which could lead to human extinction.

Some of the risks already known are threats to job markets, health harm to millions, increased impersonation, weaponis disinformation and increase discrimination.

Already, the tech has been tested to impersonate peoples voices and fool banks into engaging in transactions. With the technology becoming increasingly cheaper, it will become more of a threat.

Just this month, Geoffrey Hinton, touted as the godfather of AI quit his job at Google to educate more people on the risk of the technology.

AI scientists point to the fact that very little is known about the technology and what dangers it it poses.

While global north governments have moved quickly to start the conversation around, Zimbabwe has largely been mute. This is as startups locally have already started investing in AI.

With an election coming this year, deep fakes could become a weapon for both sides to steal march.