Artificial intelligence could prove fatal to humanity if the current trajectory of its development is not altered. This statement was made by Nate Soares, a former Google and Microsoft engineer who currently heads the Institute for Machine Intelligence Research. This was reported by The Times.
Soares is convinced that civilization is rapidly heading toward catastrophic consequences, and if we do not change our approach to technological development, our chances of survival will be no more than 5%.
“We are hurtling toward disaster at breakneck speed. If we don’t intervene, humanity’s future will be at risk,” he emphasized.
His position is shared by leading experts in the field of artificial intelligence, including Nobel Prize laureate Geoffrey Hinton, mathematician Yoshua Bengio, and representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.
They all signed an open letter that states:
“Minimizing the risk of humanity’s complete extinction due to AI must become a global priority—on par with the nuclear threat and pandemics.”
Scientists’ main fear is that the development of superintelligent artificial intelligence (ASI) could lead to a loss of human control. Such AI is potentially capable of acting strategically, manipulating information, and making decisions on its own.
Some experts believe that the danger will not necessarily take the form of a sudden disaster. A scenario in which humans are gradually phased out of decision-making processes seems much more likely. Machines can take on more and more functions, leaving humans with less and less autonomy and freedom of action.
Added to this is technological inequality: it was previously reported that people who do not use “smart” glasses with built-in AI may lag significantly behind those who actively use such technologies in terms of cognitive abilities.