AI Risks: Exaggerated Threat, Existential Threat or Something Else? VCs and techies disagree

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Conversations about the promises and dangers of AI took center stage in Toronto at the Collision technology conference. Leading venture capitalists (VCs) and top AI experts have grappled with the explosive rise of AI in recent months. However, these two groups disagreed on how the potential risks of innovation between increasingly powerful models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s PaLM, image-generation programs like Midjourney, and the countless apps and startups using these artificial intelligence.

Some experts have raised concerns in a series of recent open letters, lobbying for a pause in the development of the technology to allow infrastructure and regulation to catch up.

Among them is the extinction letter, a one-sentence public statement warning of the existential risk of AI if adopted without a proper regulatory framework.

Mitigating AI’s extinction risk should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war, the full statement reads.

“It’s not just science fiction. It’s not just scaremongering. It’s a real risk.” Geoffrey Hinton

One of the signatories is Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian cognitive psychologist, computer scientist, and neural network pioneer widely considered the godfather of AI. He reiterated those concerns on stage at an event at Collision.

On the other hand, Collision’s investors are incredibly optimistic about AI. Nearly three-quarters of respondents in a recent Pitchbook investor survey indicated that they have invested in artificial intelligence. Additionally, Khosla Ventures’ Kanu Gulati and Radical Ventures’ Jordan Jacobs both spoke about how they were incredibly optimistic about their holdings in OpenAI and CohereAI, respectively, in a Venture stage panel at Collision.

The godfather of artificial intelligence sounds the alarm in the event of a collision

Hinton detailed the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Some specific concerns he cited were bias and discrimination, misinformation, and what he called warring echo chambers over big companies wanting you to click on things that make you outraged.

Hinton then touched on the concern embodied in the extinction letter: the idea that AI systems can get smarter than humans and create targets of their own.

They could very well develop a goal to take over, and if they do, they’ll be in trouble, Hinton told Collision.

It’s not just science fiction. It’s not just scaremongering. It’s a real risk that we need to think about and we need to figure out how to deal with it in advance, she said.

“I think it’s important that people understand that it’s not just science fiction; it’s not just scaremongering” – #AI godfather, @geoffreyhinton, speaking about the risks of AI taking center stage at #CollisionConf pic.twitter.com/ u3iM0LO4hP

— Collision Conf (@CollisionHQ) June 28, 2023

Top VCs say concerns about AI are exaggerated

Prominent VCs did not share Hinton’s concerns. Sarah Guo, founder of Conviction, and angel investor Elad Gil both downplayed the concerns in a panel together on the first day of Collision.

Gil also argued that the existential risks of AI are overstated. He made a list of 20th century horrors that took place well before the advent of AI.

They were people who did terrible things to other people, she said. Claims that AI will somehow change the human dynamic for the worse [are] really exaggerated. The same argument is brought up every time there’s a new wave of technological innovation, he said.

Guo said something similar paraphrasing computer scientist Andrew Ng: what exactly is the path to existential risk from short-term AI? It’s like worrying about overpopulation on Mars.

RELATED: Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio warn of ‘AI’s extinction risk’ in public letter

Tribe Capital co-founder Arjun Sethi echoed the sentiment in an interview.

There were panicked press reports about the dangers of home electricity a century ago, he said, and it ended up being a huge boost to productivity and lifted people out of poverty. He sees the advent of AI the same way.

That doesn’t mean he ignores the negatives, he said, but he argued that regulation shouldn’t be overly focused on avoiding an event that has a small chance of happening.

He also said that he believes researchers who work on AI through a theoretical or speculative lens are not generalists and their concerns should be taken with a grain of salt.

I think there is a large group of researchers [who] I believe we would not have gotten to where we are now. So I’m generally skeptical of researchers who are experts in a certain area because their mind is limited to that specific area only, he said she.

Sarah Guo, founder of Conviction, compared concern about the existential risks of artificial intelligence to concern about overpopulation on Mars.

Tech founders address AI controversy

Aidan Gomez, CEO and co-founder of Cohere AI, recently called the six-month hiatus letter absurd. But he also shared concerns about the risks of AI. In response to a question onstage at Collision, he said Hinton is the smartest person he’s ever met or worked with, and when he talks, I listen.

However, Gomez said she shares Hinton’s concerns about the risk of existential AI, but differs in her degree of concern.

There’s definitely room for a more public discussion of these things, away from the existential side and toward the more present immediate midterm, he said.

RELATED: Cohere announces $270 million Series C

On June 29 in Collision, Mustafa Suleyman, an AI scientist and co-founder of Google’s DeepMind, said in an interview: “I don’t think we need consensus (on how to deal with the risks of AI); opinions divergent are essential and inevitable at the beginning of the trajectory of new technology.

Suleyman said he believes healthy speech between intelligent people is a normal process. However, she said she found the potential implications of artificial intelligence on synthetic media generation and the information system alarming, because they could have the power to destabilize elections and spread further disinformation. He said he hopes to see renewed attention to this issue in the coming years.

Additionally, Suleyman shared his thoughts on AI’s existential risks, arguing that the looming existential threat deserves some attention, but that people will be less interested in skynet scenarios and more in how AI will impact our reality. short-term current.

Currently, Suleyman is leading Inflection AI, which also announced its $1.3 billion raise to a $4 billion valuation on June 29.

Image courtesy of Collisione

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