- Rishi Sunak announced a £100million investment to accelerate the use of AI
An influential cabal of tech bosses and artificial intelligence experts are welcoming the ‘inevitable succession’ of robots, an investigation has found.
Global leaders and Silicon Valley executives are jetting in to Rishi Sunak’s world-first AI Safety Summit this week to discuss how best to safeguard against its terrifying potential.
But seemingly far from seeking to prevent machines from taking over, a powerful group within the tech industry is telling us to ’embrace and prepare’ for it.
Among them is billionaire entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, who just a fortnight ago published a manifesto listing safety, ethics and regulation as the ‘enemy’ to the future of AI.
The investor – recently described as ‘the chief ideologist for the Silicon Valley elite’ – is on the board of directors at Meta, which owns social media platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Mr Andreessen’s views are echoed in the academic community with ‘rock star’ professor Dr Richard Sutton last month telling a major AI conference the world should ’embrace’ succession.
Until recently, Dr Sutton – who argued ‘clamping down’ on the technology was ‘not the answer’ – was a senior figure at Google Deepmind, one of three major AI firms attending the summit.
The debate over regulation comes amid fears Big Tech is engulfed in a dangerous arms race to create the most powerful AI models – and seemingly paying little heed to safety concerns as they do so.
Earlier this year, Tesla boss Elon Musk claimed that during talks with his close friend and former Google boss, Larry Page, the latter was not ‘concerned’ and appeared ‘quite cavalier’ about the risks AI posed.
Meanwhile, a government paper last week predicted future machines may try to convince humans to allow them to take over – and stop them regaining control.
Experts are concerned this is ‘a real possibility’ and ‘could be permanent and catastrophic’.
Mr Andreessen’s controversial 5,000-word opus The Techno-optimist Manifesto outlined a future in which AI would ‘expand capabilities to unimagined heights’.
But rather than put limits on its development, Mr Andreessen – whose venture capital firm invests billions in the latest AI start-ups – called for the technology to be allowed to ‘expand as fully and broadly as we possibly can’.
Describing how it would ‘fix scores’ of common causes of death, he suggests any limits placed on its development ‘will cost lives’ and ‘is a form of murder’.
Whereas, Dr Sutton last month told the fifth World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai that with AI ‘inevitably we will create our successors’.
The scientist – who argued the average computer will have the capacity for human-level intelligence by 2030 – asked the audience: ‘Why would we want greater beings kept subservient to us?’
His views have long been echoed by Hans Moravec, co-founder of US tech firm Seegrid, whose goal is to develop a fully autonomous robot that can work without any human involvement.
The ‘world-renowned’ professor has long prophesised machines will ‘displace us from existence’. In his book Robot: Mere Machine To Transcendent Mind, he says: ‘They will embody humanity’s best hope for a long-term future.’
He added it’s our duty to ‘give AI every advantage and bow out when we can no longer contribute’.
Mr Sunak has announced a £100million investment to accelerate the use of AI in research for cancer and dementia treatments.
AI tools, from a £2million investment, will also be rolled out in classrooms across England to help reduce workloads for teachers.
The technology will include AI-designed lesson plans and quizzes.
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