i think the danger of ai is much greater than the the danger of nuclear warheads by a lot [Music] mark my words ai is far more dangerous than nukes i try to convince people to slow down slow down ai to regulate ai [Music] this was futile i tried for years the biggest issue i see with so-called ai experts is that they they think they know more than they do and they think they're smarter than they actually are [Music] this is this tends to play playing smart people they're defining themselves by their intelligence and they they
don't like the idea that a machine could be way smarter than them so they discount the idea which is fundamentally flawed that's the wishful thinking situation i'm really quite close to very close to the cutting edge in ai and it scares the hell out of me it's capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows and the rate of improvement is exponential it feels like we are the biological bootloader for ai effectively we are building it [Music] and then we're building progressively greater intelligence and the percentage of intelligence that is not human is increasing and eventually
we will represent a very small percentage of intelligence it's going to come faster than anyone appreciates i think it's with each passing year the sophistication of of computer intelligence is is growing dramatically i mean i really think we're on an exponential uh improvement path of artificial intelligence and the number of smart humans that are developing ai is also increasing dramatically i mean if you look at like the attendance at the ai conferences they're they're doubling every year um they're getting full um i have a a sort of a young cousin of mine who's graduating from
berkeley um in computer science and physics and i asked him like well how many of the smart students are studying ai in computer science and the answer is all of them with a better approach or better outcome is that uh we achieve democratization of ai technology meaning that uh no one company or a small set of individuals has control over advanced ai technology i think that that's very dangerous um it could also get stolen by somebody bad you know like some evil dictator the country could send their intelligence agency to go steal it and gain
control it just becomes a very unstable situation i think if you've got any um any incredibly powerful ai um you just don't know who's who's gonna control that so it's not as i think that the risk is that the ai would develop a will of its own right off the bat i think it's more that's the concern is that some someone um may use it in a way that is bad um or and even if they weren't going to use it in a way that's bad that somebody could take it from them and use it
in a way that's bad that that i think is quite a big danger we are all of us already are cyborgs um so you have a machine extension of yourself in the form of your your phone and your computer and all your applications you are already superhuman but by far you have more more powerful capability than president united states had you know 30 years ago if you have an internet link you have an article of wisdom you can communicate to millions of people and communicate to the rest of earth instantly and these are magical powers
that didn't exist not that long ago so everyone is already superhuman i think it's the singularity is probably the right word because we just don't know what's going to happen once there's intelligence substantially greater than that of a human brain [Music] i mean most of the movies and tv featuring ai that they don't describe in quite the way it's likely to actually take place but i think you just have to consider like even in the benign scenario where um ai if ai is much smarter than a person um what what do we do yeah what
what is that what job do we have i i have to say that when you know when something is a danger to the public then that there needs to be some government agency like regulators the fact is like we've got regulators in um you know the aircraft industry car industry uh with drugs food um you know and anything that's sort of a public risk and i mean i think this has to fall into the category of a public risk usually it'll be something some new technology will cause damage or death there will be an outcry
there will be an investigation years will pass there will be some sort of insight committee there will be rule making then there will be oversight eventually regulations this all takes many years this is the normal course of things if you look at say automotive regulations how long did it take for seat belts to be implemented to be required you know the water industry fought seat belts i think for more than a decade successfully fought any regulations on seat belts even though the numbers were extremely obvious if you had a seatbelt on you would be far
less likely to die or be seriously injured it was unequivocal and the industry fought this for years successfully eventually after many many people died regulators insisted on seat belts if this is a this time frame is not relevant to ai you can't take 10 years from the point which is dangerous it's too late i'm not normally an advocate of regulation and oversight i mean i think once you generally you're on the side of minimizing those things but this is a case where you have a very serious danger to the public and therefore there needs to
be a public body that has insight and then oversight on to confirm that everyone is developing ai safely this is extremely important i think the danger of ai is much greater than the the danger of nuclear warheads by a lot um and nobody would suggest that we allow anyone to just build nuclear warheads if they want that would be insane so why do we have no regulatory oversight this is insane and the intent with openai is to democratize ai power um there's a quote that i love from lord acton he was the guy that came
up with power corrupts and absolute power crafts absolutely um which is that uh freedom consists of the distribution of power and despotism and its concentration and so i think it's important if we have this incredible power of ai that it not be concentrated in the hands of a few and potentially lead to a world that we don't want i'm not really all that worried about the short term stuff the things that are like narrow ai is not a species level risk um it it will result in dislocation uh in lost jobs and um you know
that sort of better weaponry and that kind of thing but it is not a fundamental species level risk whereas digital super intelligence is so it's really all about laying the groundwork to make sure that if humanity collectively decides that creating digital super intelligence is the right move then we should do so very very carefully very very carefully we're rapidly headed towards digital super intelligence that photo exceeds any human i think it's very obvious you
