OpenAI Foundation Board Member Warns AI Takeover May Be Months Away
Paul Cristiano, a board member of the OpenAI Foundation and executive director of the Alignment Research Center, warned a Toronto audience that AI accidents are the most likely cause of death for most people in the room, and that an AI takeover of society could be only months away. He defined takeover as goal-pursuing AI systems calling the shots on Earth while human resistance proves as futile as civilians stopping the US military, potentially causing mass death and uninhabitable conditions.
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How do you think you're going to die?
If you go by the current statistics for deaths in the US, it's reasonable to expect that cancer or heart disease will eventually get you. But OpenAI Foundation board member and Alignment Research Center Executive Director Paul Cristiano thinks we should all be worried about another major mortality risk. Speaking at a lecture series this week, Cristiano bluntly told the audience in a Toronto Convention Center, "I think for most people in this room, the most likely reason they will die is because of an AI accident."
In the opening lecture of a three-part series, Cristiano outlined his worries about the risk of an impending "AI takeover." He defined that as a situation where goal-pursuing AI systems "call the shots in the same sense that humans today call the shots and what happens on Earth" and where any human trying to stop them "would be as ineffective as if you or me was trying to stop the US military." Such a situation would likely lead to mass death and perhaps uninhabitable environments for humans, Cristiano said.