DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has bigger worries about AI than its impact on human jobs

India Today

2 days ago

At a time when fears about artificial intelligence replacing human jobs are dominating the headlines, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has much bigger concerns. He is worried about its misuse. The Nobel laureate warns that the true danger from AI is not its capability to perform certain human jobs, but the risk of powerful AI falling into the wrong hands. He believes the potential misuse of AI could have devastating consequences.advertisementIn an interview with CNN at the SXSW festival in London, Hassabis downplayed apocalyptic predictions of mass job displacement. Instead, he pointed to the risks of artificial general intelligence (AGI) — the highly autonomous systems with human-level capabilities which— being used by bad actors. 'A bad actor could repurpose those same technologies for a harmful end,' said Hassabis. 'And so one big thing is how do we restrict access to these powerful systems from bad actors but enable good actors to do many, many amazing things with it?'Hassabis's comments come at a time when reports are flooding the internet predicting AI will take over most entry-level white-collar jobs. These include warnings from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who said AI could wipe out half of such jobs in the near future. But Hassabis's concerns have now spotlighted the bigger issues of national security and ethical governance.advertisement
'Both of those risks are important, challenging ones,' Hassabis said, referring to job disruption and AI misuse. But according to him, it's the latter that he finds more urgent — especially given the speed at which AI capabilities are advancing with minimal oversight.To control the potential misuse, the DeepMind chief called for an international framework to govern the use of AI — a kind of digital Geneva Convention — to prevent the technology from becoming a tool for harm. While acknowledging current geopolitical tensions, he expressed hope that global collaboration will eventually emerge as AI becomes more powerful and widespread. 'I think it'll become more clear to the world that that needs to happen,' he said.The misuse of AI is already prevalent — from deepfake pornography to AI-generated impersonations of government officials, the harmful use of AI is manifesting in troubling ways.As for job replacement, Hassabis has acknowledged that AI will inevitably take over some roles, as he believes humanity is going through a transformation even bigger than the Industrial Revolution. But he is optimistic as he believes rather than replacing humans, more skillful job opportunities will emerge. And AI will more likely serve as a helper — allowing humans to focus on more important tasks by taking care of the menial ones. 'Usually what happens is new, even better jobs arrive to take the place of some of the jobs that get replaced,' he said.