Eric Schmidt assured that advances in AI could leave humanity on the brink of “existential risk”.
The former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidtoffered a terrifying vision of the future of artificial intelligence and ignited the controversy surrounding the potential harm that this technology can cause humanity and its imminent regulation.
His alarming prediction during The Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit in London suggested that he raises a “existential risk” which could result in “many, many, many, many people injured or killed“.
“There are scenarios not today, but reasonably soon, where these systems will be able to find exploits zero-day cyber problems, or discover new kinds of biology“Schmidt said at the event.
He added: “Now this is fiction today, but his reasoning is likely true. And when that happens, we want to be ready to know how to make sure these things aren’t misused by evil people.”
Summarizing his thoughts, Schmidt said that AI poses an “existential risk” which he defined as “many, many, many, many people getting hurt or killed.”
When asked about AI regulation, Schmidt was pessimistic. He does not believe that a new regulatory body will be established in the United States to deal specifically with AI, which could be a viable solution to the rapid growth of AI.
Schmidt also offered no potential solutions to these problems, instead saying they are “a broader issue for society”.
Schmidt, who was CEO of Google between 2001 and 2011, the year in which he became head of its board of directors until 2017, was emphatic at the same time in asserting that AI will be beneficial to science and education, and that professionals of these and other fields will make them more “capable and productive”, rather than pose an occupational risk.
“We need these humans, I want a human teacher, a human doctor, and a human mayor,” said the founder of the philanthropic organization Schmidt Futures, who said that the percentage that this technology represents for the extinction of the human species “is zero.” .
Google agrees with the EU to regulate the power of AI
The European Commission and the CEO of Google, sweat pichaipromised this Wednesday to promote a voluntary pact to regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI) among all developers of this technology, whether they are from the European Union or from outside the EU.
Pichai met today in Brussels with the Vice President of the European Commission for the Digital Age, Margrethe Vestager, and with the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, with whom he discussed this matter.
“Need a law of artificial intelligence as soon as possible. But artificial intelligence evolves extremely quickly. Therefore, we need a voluntary pact on universal rules for artificial intelligence now,” Vestager said on his official Twitter account.
Breton also pointed out that “we cannot afford to wait for the artificial intelligence regulations” that are being negotiated in Brussels “to begin to be applied.”
The European institutions are currently negotiating a law to regulate artificial intelligence – the first of its kind in the world – and if the talks were to end this year, it would not begin to be applied until 2026.
The commitment between Brussels and the technology company to promote a voluntary agreement to regulate artificial intelligence comes in the midst of a debate on the need to rethink the use of this technology to avoid possible risks.
Breton and Pichai also discussed the two laws that the European Union has recently approved to regulate large technology companies, the digital services law and the digital markets law.
The first forces them to transparently explain how they design the algorithms that determine the content that users see on the Internet, and the second forces companies to meet a series of requirements to alleviate the problems of free competition suffered by the sector. .
In this sense, Breton appreciated the “commitment” shown by Pichai to “accelerate” the fight against disinformation in view of the elections to be held in the EU countries.
SL
