AI experts reveal how the world could collapse under the control of smart technology
Experts in artificial intelligence left podcaster Joe Rogan stunned as they spoke about how quickly the technology is evolving.
The UFC commentator invited AI experts Jeremie and Eduoard Harris - the CEO and CTO, respectively, of Gladstone AI - onto his popular The Joe Rogan Show.
Gladstone AI is dedicated to promoting the responsible development and adoption of artificial intelligence.
Rogan got into his concerns about the emerging technology with his guests right off the bat, asking: 'If there's a doomsday clock for AI... what time is it?'
Jeremie said 'there's disagreement' among experts in the field, but concluded that AI 'could hit human-level... capabilities across the board' by 2027 or 2028.
He quipped: 'You'll be able to have AI on your show and ask it what the doomsday clock is like by then.'
But Rogan lamented that the AI probably would not laugh at his jokes.
Jeremie explained that a lab called METR recently conducted a study that showed how quickly AI models are improving.
In that study, researchers gave the models a realistic task to carry out and compared the times of completion between AI and humans.
They found that the technology completed tasks that would take humans less than four minutes with a nearly 100 per cent success rate and a 50 per cent success rate for tasks that take humans an hour to complete.
Eduoard then noted that the rate is increasing almost every four months, especially for tasks involving research and software engineering.
By 2027, they concluded, the kind of work an AI researcher does in a month could be done by the AI itself with a 50 per cent success rate.
At that point, Eduoard joked that Rogan could have an AI system as a guest and ask it itself what a doomsday clock looks like.
The interview comes after Demis Hassabis, the CEO of DeepMind at Google, shared his belief that scientists are on track to create Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) within the next five to ten years.
AGI refers to artificial intelligence with software that rivals the cognitive ability of a human.
It's a hypothetical stage of AI advancement as, currently, the technology can only pull from existing content and doesn't have the curiosity or imagination to create new concepts like humans do.
However, Hassabis believes that AGI is on track to become 'embedded' in our daily lives by 2035.
He also said that today's technology hasn't yet achieved 'consciousness' and revealed that it's a possibility that AI bots may eventually develop self-awareness.
When that does happen, though, Hassabis said it may be difficult for humans to recognize.
He said: 'With machines - they're running on silicon, so even if they exhibit the same behaviors, and even if they say the same things, it doesn't necessarily mean that this sensation of consciousness that we have is the same thing they will have.'
If the AI models continue to progress, Hassabis said it could be the end of human diseases and the climate crisis, he told Time Magazine in a separate interview.
He said: 'I think some of the biggest problems that face us today as a society, whether that's climate or disease, will be helped by AI solutions.
'I'd be very worried about society today if I didn't know that something as transformative as AI was coming down the line.'
At the same time though, Hassabis acknowledged that AI could cause destruction - especially if international cooperation isn't achieved.
He argued that the AI models need to be tested for dangerous capabilities, and legal guardrails need to be implemented to prevent the technology from falling into the wrong hands.
He noted that it is 'extremely difficult' to monitor AI advancement to prevent systems from acting autonomously.
Other AI experts have offered a more pessimistic perspective on the future. Microsoft founder Bill Gates expressed his concerns in a recent interview with Jimmy Fallon.
He said: 'I love the way it'll drive innovation forward, but I think it's a little bit unknown if we'll be able to shape it. And so, legitimately, people are like "wow, this is a bit scary." It's completely new territory.'
Elsewhere, computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton has predicted that AI will wipe out the human race.
Hinton is known as the 'Godfather of AI' for his work creating the foundations for machine learning.
He was a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, but recently resigned from his job at Google out of concern that AI advancement was going in a dangerous direction.
'The situation we're in now is that most of the experts in the field think that sometime, within probably the next 20 years, we're going to develop AIs that are smarter than people,' Hinton revealed in an interview with the BBC.
'And that's a very scary thought,' he added.
Hinton also said that whether AI helps or hurts society in the future is dependent on how the government regulates it.
He said: 'We need regulations to stop people using it for bad things, and we don't appear to have those kinds of political systems in place at present.'
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