‘AI tech is as harmful as nuclear bombs – we ought to be freaking out about it’

A top artificial intelligence boffin is warning tech giants behind the psycho scumbag robots that will terminate us are distracting humanity from their deadly dangers.

Scientist and anti-artificial campaigner Max Tegmark added the development of the technology is just as alarming as the fears over the building of nuclear bombs during World War Two. And he says talking about issues such as AI causing data breaches is being successfully used as a smokescreen to obscure the reality it could wipe out humanity.

He said: “In 1942, Enrico Fermi built the first ever reactor with a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under a Chicago football field. When the top physicists found out about that, they really freaked out, because they realised that the single biggest hurdle remaining to building a nuclear bomb had just been overcome.

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“They realised that it was just a few years away – and in fact, it was three years, with the Trinity test in 1945. AI models that can pass the Turing test where someone cannot tell in conversation that they are not speaking to another human are the same warning for the kind of AI that you can lose control over.”

Tegmark added AI safety campaigners – who now include the “godfather” of the tech Geoffrey Hinton – are right to be “freaking out” over its development. The scientist’s Future of Life Institute last year led the call for a six-month pause on advanced AI research on the back of fears it poses risks including wiping out humanity.

He said tech leaders who harbour fears about AI already feel powerless to stop it. And he added its dangers are being brushed off in the same way as disease risks over smoking were in the past.

He said: “In 1955, the first journal articles came out saying smoking causes lung cancer, and you’d think that pretty quickly there would be some regulation. “But no, it took until 1980, because there was this huge push by industry to distract. I feel that’s what’s happening now.

“Of course AI causes current harms as well: there’s bias, it harms marginalised groups – but like the UK’s technology secretary Michelle Donelan herself said, it’s not like we can’t deal with both. It’s a bit like saying, let’s not pay any attention to climate change because there’s going to be a hurricane this year.

He said about tech leaders: “I think they all feel that, even if they want to stop, they can’t.

“If a CEO of a tobacco company wakes up one morning and feels what they’re doing is not right, what’s going to happen? They’re going to replace the CEO. So the only way you can get safety first is if the government puts in place safety standards for everybody.”

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