A coalition of current and former employees of OpenAI, the parent company behind ChatGPT, has issued a warning about this. Existential threats Presented by Advanced artificial intelligenceWhich also includes the possibility of human extinction.
In detailed description Letter According to the report released yesterday (June 4), the group includes 13 former and current employees of firms such as OpenAI. anthropicand google’s DeepMindoutlined a series of risks associated with AI, despite its potential benefits.
The letter states, “We are current and former employees at leading AI companies, and we believe in the potential of AI technology to deliver unprecedented benefits to humanity.” However, it also highlights concerns: “These risks range from the further reinforcement of existing inequalities, to manipulation and misinformation, to loss of control of autonomous AI systems, to potentially human extinction.”
Neel Nanda, head of mechanistic interpretability at DeepMind and a former member of AnthropicAI, was one of the signatories. “This was not because I have anything I currently want to warn my current or former employers about, or any specific criticism of their attitude towards whistleblowers,” he wrote on X. “But I do believe AGI will be incredibly important and, as all labs acknowledge, could pose an existential threat. Any lab seeking to create AGI must prove itself worthy of public trust, and having a strong and protected right for employees to whistleblow is a crucial first step.”
I’ve signed a call to leading AI companies to guarantee workers the right to be warned.
This was not because I had anything currently on record about which I wanted to warn my current or former employers, or any specific criticism of their attitude to whistleblowers.https://t.co/hyEBuy3YDj
— Neel Nanda (@NeelNanda5) June 4, 2024
Lack of accountability and regulation of AI
Proponents say that AI companies and global governments recognize these threatsCurrent corporate and regulatory measures are insufficient to stop them. They argue, “AI companies have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, and we do not think typical corporate governance structures are enough to change this.”
It then criticizes the transparency of AI companies, claiming that they have “substantial non-public information about the capabilities and limitations of their systems, the adequacy of their protective measures, and the risk levels of various types of harm.” It points to the lack of obligation on these companies to disclose such critical information, stating, “They currently have only weak obligations to share this information with governments, and none with civil society.”
Employees expressed a dire need for greater government oversight and public accountability. “As long as there is no effective government oversight over these corporations, current and former employees are among the few people who can hold them accountable to the public,” the group said. They also demonstrated the limitations of existing whistleblower protections, which do not fully cover the unregulated risks posed by AI technologies.
OpenAI in trouble
This open letter comes amid turmoil for major AI companies, particularly OpenAI, which AI assistant with advanced features Capable of having live voice conversations with humans and responding to visual input such as video feeds or written math problems.
Scarlett Johansson, who once played an AI assistant in the movie “Her”, OpenAI accused of copying one of its products after her voice, despite having rejected such an offer. Although the CEO of OpenAI tweeted the word “her” during the launch of the voice assistant, the company has since denied claims of using Johansson’s voice as a model.
In May, OpenAI also disbanded a special team created to investigate long-term threats associated with AI, less than a year after its founding. Last July, OpenAI’s head of trust and security, Dave Wilner also resigned,
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