Artificial intelligence now beats some of the best human forecasters
Artificial intelligence now beats some of the best human forecasters. “If you want to kill people, there are much, much, much better ways to kill them than to try to engineer some virus or bacterium and then release it,” he says—whether you’re the most sophisticated artificial mind ever created or just a regular human.
What happened
The development of artificial intelligence “could spell the end of the human race”, warned professor and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in 2014 – a little less than a decade before the public got its hands on the generative AI features of the original version of ChatGPT. Genesis: artificial intelligence, hope, and the human spirit – Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Craig Mundie and Eleanor RundeAre you looking for AI insights from a man who faced frequent, wide-ranging and substantial allegations of war crimes?
OpenAI’s ChatGPT listed this as one of the five best books on artificial intelligence. If they unilaterally slow their fevered pursuit of artificial super-intelligence to make it safer, their rivals – less concerned about existential risks, of course – will get there first, with potentially devastating consequences for humankind, let alone the bottom line of the lab that took its foot off the pedal. Jason Kelly, the CEO of the biotech startup Ginkgo Bioworks, thinks it’s unlikely an artificial general intelligence could commandeer and disseminate existing pathogens, let alone engineer new ones and deploy them.
Even if a nefarious super intelligence did somehow manage to unleash a supervirus, he argues that scientists would be able to use other AI systems to swiftly develop a vaccine. “But I do think that an AI could pay someone to do it for them. ”She thinks AI-assisted bioterrorism is an immediate threat and that there are some groups that might be nihilistic enough to do so, including “transhumanist AI successionists,” people who buy into a fringe ideology who hope to supplant humans with bots.
The wider picture
OpenAI’s stated mission was to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return”. Explore more on these topicsTechnologyAI (artificial intelligence)GoogleSam AltmanStephen HawkingChatbotsAnthropicanalysisShareReuse this contentMost viewedMost viewed Skip to main contentSkip to navigation00:00:0000:00:00Is Trump’s AI obsession walking the world into disaster? – podcastTech bosses have called for a slowdown in artificial intelligence and the creation of formal guardrails from the US government.
Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian US tech editor, Blake Montgomery Watch Jonathan Freedland on our new Politics Weekly YouTube channel Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian. com Listen to the latest season of Black Box Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/ReutersExplore more on these topicsAI (artificial intelligence)Politics Weekly AmericaDonald TrumpUS politicsComputingMost viewedMost viewed In this articlePLTRFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTwatch nowVIDEO1:1601:16Palantir CEO Alex Karp: AI needs to have 'reasonable guidelines'Squawk on the StreetPalantir CEO Alex Karp called for "reasonable guidelines" on artificial intelligence regulation but said nationalization may be needed because of the liabilities tied to the technology's "unlimited risks.
Here’s the essential reading list to make sense of it allIt’s a chaotic time in an industry that’s reshaping our lives – Guardian reporters and experts recommend the books that help explain how we got here, and where we’re headingHave you been feeling trapped in an endless cycle of artificial intelligence hype and panic? Superintelligence – Nick BostromThis 2014 book is one of the foundational AI texts for people like Elon Musk, who, alongside Bill Gates, has publicly praised the bestseller.
Deeper context: history, ideology and fictionThe Rise and Fall of the Artificial State – Jill LeporeA historical look at the political and industrial movements that have wanted to cede human agency and democratic rule to automation and authoritarianism.
What has been reported
Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future – Anita Say ChanOur current systems of techno-surveillance and algorithmic discrimination are rooted in 19th-century campaigns against immigration and in favor of eugenics, the practice of selectively breeding humans to improve their intelligence or racial dominance, Chan argues. Nick Robins-Early contributed reportingExplore more on these topicsBooksAI (artificial intelligence)US politicsComputingRobotsfeaturesShareReuse this contentMost viewedMost viewed The latest change to the legislative schedule means House members will avoid voting on Republican Thomas Massie’s resolution to impeach the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and comes amid a frenzied attempt to propose legislation on artificial intelligence.
Explore more on these topicsHouse of RepresentativesMike JohnsonPete HegsethRepublicansUS-Israel war on IranAI (artificial intelligence)US CongressnewsShareReuse this contentMost viewedMost viewed But Amodei’s call for the leading artificial intelligence labs to coordinate to slow the breakneck pace of AI development, agree on safety standards and “pace the frontier”, (a call quickly endorsed by Open AI’s Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Google Deep Mind’s Demis Hassabis) is just a hi-tech version of an old proposition by corporate America – to get a pass from antitrust laws designed to protect the American economy from colluding businesses.
Explore more on these topicsAI (artificial intelligence)OpenAIAnthropicSam AltmanElon MuskanalysisShareReuse this contentMost viewedMost viewed A bad actor would need to obtain the necessary gene fragments and build a whole genome from scratch, then verify that the virus can infect humans, cause the desired illness, and be transmissible from person to person. Robotic lab assistants can automate some tasks and speed up workflows to a point, but a person would still need the know-how to run those experiments and the resources to carry them out.
What happens next
“The AI could not take over the lab,” he says, in part because the humans who worked inside could simply decline to get the bot whatever substances and equipment it was requesting to physically produce a bioweapon. All those pesky humans acting as checks mean “you’d have to have dramatically more robots all over the place,” he says, for an AGI to be able to deploy machines to do the often-delicate virology work required.
Immunologist Derya Unutmaz likewise says humans would be able to thwart any attempts by AGI to develop a deadly disease. Still, even some people who don’t think that AGI independently siccing a bioweapon on us right now is a real threat are concerned about bad actors using the technology as well as what might happen down the line. “The risks tend to be somewhat misunderstood,” genetic biologist and professor of computational biology Francois Belloux tells WIRED, noting that people tend to “overestimate the value of pathogens as weapons. ”Setting aside the AGI of it all, Belloux says that bioweapons are simply not an especially attractive choice for aspiring genocidaires, especially as it’s difficult to target certain groups and spare others, and mass-producing and distributing pathogens is logistically complicated versus, say, launching a bomb.
“That's why we need layered approaches that provide friction across the entire pathway, from ideation to intention of a bad actor, all the way to the release of a bioweapon. ”Unutmaz says there’s an even more pressing worry: that all the AI doom conversations are diverting attention from how cutting-edge systems can assist humans in vaccine development and other medical breakthroughs. Isabella WardThe AI Researcher Who Just Quit Anthropic Says It’s ‘Crunch Time for Humanity’Jacob Coxon talks to WIRED about the “mini Manhattan project” inside Anthropic, the problem with alignment, and why AI labs have just a few years left to make their systems safe.
The report has been compiled by The Daily Waves using information reported across wired.com, theguardian.com, cnbc.com. Details are presented according to the information available at the time of publication and may change as authorities, organisers or other relevant parties provide updates.