Godfathers of AI Have a New Warning: Get a Handle on the Tech Before It's Too Late

pcmag.com:

Two dozen experts, AI scientists, and researchers—including two of the three "godfathers of AI"—are calling for AI firms to be held responsible for their actions and for governments to regulate AI more effectively.

In a letter signed by Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, among others, the group outlines the potential pitfalls with the swift advancement of AI technology. They're concerned about cutting corners with regard to safety, a hands-off approach from regulators, and a lack of systems in place to even properly test advanced autonomous AI systems.

"AI systems could rapidly come to outperform humans in an increasing number of tasks. If such systems are not carefully designed and deployed, they pose a range of societal-scale risks. They threaten to amplify social injustice, erode social stability, and weaken our shared understanding of reality that is foundational to society," they wrote.

The group also put together a list of policies they say should be enacted in order to better protect people from the dangers of AI. Their call-to-action includes requiring both AI labs and governments to allocate one-third of their AI-related R&D resources to the safe and ethical use of AI. They also call on governments to establish oversight and monitoring of AI and for AI labs to implement responsible scaling policies.

Other ideas include a licensing system for training AI systems, better compartmentalization of information within AI labs, and legal protections for whistleblowers at major AI labs.

Both Bengio and Hinton have been outspoken about using AI safely and responsibly. Hinton left his job at Google in order to speak out against the misuse of AI, including deepfakes, fake photos and videos, and computer-generated clones