LogInFearmongering is useful for business.
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AI is a nuisance for some and a threat for others, but the rhetoric is shifting toward something bigger, like AI destroying humanity. But is it really true?
Andrew Ng, Google Brain founder and Stanford University professor, doesn't think so. An expert in machine learning, he believes that the idea that AI could make us go extinct is exaggerated by tech corporations that don't want to compete with open-source AI tools.
Their fearmongering tactics lead to "policy proposals that try to require licensing of AI," which, Ng thinks, "would crush innovation."
“There are definitely large tech companies that would rather not have to try to compete with open source [AI], so they’re creating fear of AI leading to human extinction," he told The Australian Financial Review. “It’s been a weapon for lobbyists to argue for legislation that would be very damaging to the open-source community.”
In March, researchers and tech companies' CEOs, including Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and Emad Mostaque, urged AI companies to halt the advancement of AI. Later, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stood before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, saying that "regulatory intervention by governments" is crucial to "mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models."
Ng, who taught him at Stanford, said, "There’s a standard regulatory capture playbook that has played out in other industries, and I would hate to see that executed successfully in AI." However, he does believe AI should be regulated, but it has to be done carefully.
“I don’t think no regulation is the right answer, but with the direction regulation is headed in a lot of countries, I think we’d be better off with no regulation than what we’re getting.
"But thoughtful regulation would be much better than no regulation."
Ng admits that "AI has caused harm," but "just because regulation could be helpful doesn’t mean we want bad regulation." And one step toward good regulations is transparency from technology companies, in his opinion.
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