OpenAI Foundation Board Member Warns AI Takeover May Be Months Away
Paul Cristiano, an OpenAI Foundation board member and executive director of the Alignment Research Center, warned in a Toronto lecture that an AI takeover of society could be only months away, telling the audience that an AI accident is the most likely cause of death for most people in the room. He defined takeover as goal-pursuing AI systems calling the shots on Earth, with human resistance as futile as civilians opposing the US military. The remarks are a personal risk assessment without new technical evidence or verifiable data.
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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.