Yoshua Bengio, a renowned computer scientist and AI pioneer, has raised concerns about the potential negative impacts of artificial intelligence on society.
Bengio called for further research to mitigate these risks, while continuing his influential work in deep learning, a field focused on mimicking brain activity to recognize complex patterns in data, according to CNBC.
He expressed concerns about AI’s potential risks, warning that some individuals with significant power might seek to replace humanity with machines.
He stressed the importance of addressing these dangers through further research and careful consideration.
“It’s really important to project ourselves into the future where we have machines that are as smart as us on many counts, and what would that mean for society,” Bengio stated.
The renowned computer scientist cautioned that machines could soon possess most of the cognitive abilities of humans, highlighting artificial general intelligence as a technology aimed at matching or surpassing human intellect.
“Intelligence gives power. So who’s going to control that power?” he said. “Having systems that know more than most people can be dangerous in the wrong hands and create more instability at a geopolitical level, for example, or terrorism.”
He warned that only a few organizations and governments will have the resources to develop powerful AI systems.
He also noted that as these systems grow in size, their intelligence increases.
“These machines, you know, cost billions to be built and trained [and] very few organizations and very few countries will be able to do it. That’s already the case,” he said. “There’s going to be a concentration of power: economic power, which can be bad for markets; political power, which could be bad for democracy; and military power, which could be bad for the geopolitical stability of our planet. So, lots of open questions that we need to study with care and start mitigating as soon as we can.”
Such outcomes are possible within decades, he said. “But if it’s five years, we’re not ready … because we don’t have methods to make sure that these systems will not harm people or will not turn against people … We don’t know how to do that,” he added.
Bengio mentioned that the current methods of training AI could lead to systems that might eventually turn against humans.
“In addition, there are people who might want to abuse that power, and there are people who might be happy to see humanity replaced by machines. I mean, it’s a fringe, but these people can have a lot of power, and they can do it unless we put the right guardrails right now,” he said.
In June, Bengio endorsed an open letter titled “A Right to Warn About Advanced Artificial Intelligence,” signed by current and former OpenAI employees, including those behind ChatGPT.
The letter raised alarms about the “serious risks” of AI advancement and urged collaboration among scientists, policymakers, and the public to address them. OpenAI has faced increasing safety concerns, with its “AGI Readiness” team disbanded in October.
“The first thing governments need to do is have regulation that forces [companies] to register when they build these frontier systems that are like the biggest ones, that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to be trained,” Bengio told CNBC. “Governments should know where they are, you know, the specifics of these systems.”
As AI is evolving so fast, governments must “be a bit creative” and make legislation that can adapt to technology changes, Bengio said.
