KYLE ORLAND , Ars Technica ; OpenAI board member worries an AI “takeover” of society could be months away
Researcher traces a path from AI reward hacking to potential human extinction.
"Speaking at a lecture series this week, Cristiano bluntly told the audience in a Toronto Convention Center, “I think for most people in this room, the most likely reason they will die is because of an AI accident.”
n the opening lecture of a three-part series, Cristiano outlined his worries about the risk of an impending “AI takeover.” He defined that as a situation where goal-pursuing AI systems “call the shots in the same sense that humans today call the shots and what happens on Earth” and where any human trying to stop them “would be as ineffective as if you or me was trying to stop the US military.” Such a situation would likely lead to mass death and perhaps uninhabitable environments for humans, Cristiano said.
Despite his grim assessment of our collective mortality risk, Cristiano admitted in his talk that there’s no “quantitative model” that can “put a number” on the likelihood of this kind of AI takeover. In almost the same breath, though, he said that if AI continues to develop at “the most rapid trajectory,” humanity is “looking at something like a coin flip of an AI takeover,” including a “meaningful risk” of one happening in the next six to 12 months. And even with realistic policy responses slowing things down, the risk remains “exceptionally high,” he said."
