AI has many dangers and could be a threat for the entire human race, says historian Yuval Noah Harari

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been the talk of the tech world since last year, when OpenAI launched its revolutionary generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT. The AI tool left people amazed by its unique capabilities. Before ChatGPT’s launch, we never knew that we could ask an AI chatbot to conduct research, write essays or compose poetry. But when ChatGPT started taking care of all these tasks, people were both excited and scared. Excited because they could now share some of the workload with the new kid on the block. And scared because you never know how this technology harms us in the future.

Time and again, several tech experts have warned against the possible downsides of generative AI evolving. And historian and author Yuval Noah Harari has been one of them. He has again talked about AI causing problems for the human race and this time, the historian says that it might be the reason we get into an existential crisis as a species.

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AI might be a threat in future

According to a report in The Guardian, Harari said that there could be a “large number of dangerous scenarios” with AI and that each of these scenarios could have a “relatively small probability.” However, taken together, these could lead to an “existential threat to the survival of human civilisation.”

While speaking to the publication, he said that the concern about testing AI models was “foreseeing all the problems that a powerful system could cause.” In this case, there isn’t a single dangerous scenario that can be understood by everyone.

He also talked about the recently-held global AI safety summit in Bletchley Park and called it an “important step” in future. During the summit, governments from across the globe had expressed concern about AI and to do something about it.

“Maybe the most encouraging or hopeful thing about it is that they could get not just the European Union, the UK, the United States, but also the government of China to sign the declaration,” Harari said and added that according to him, this was a “very positive sign.”

“Without global cooperation, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to rein in the most dangerous potential of AI,” he added.

Elon Musk talks to Rishi Sunak about AI

During the summit, UK PM Rishi Sunak interviewed Twitter owner Elon Musk. During the interview, Musk had talked about AI regulation by the government and had said that having a ‘referee’ is a good thing.

The UK Prime Minister also asked Musk about people’s fear of losing their jobs to AI. Responding to this, Musk said, “We are seeing the most destructive force in history here. We will have something that is smarter than the smartest human. There will come a point where no job is needed – you can have a job if you want one for personal satisfaction, but the AI will be able to do everything.” He then added that this situation is “both good and bad.”