New warnings about the risks of AI to humanity revive a long-running debate

New warn­ings from with­in the ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence in­dus­try have re­vived a long-run­ning de­bate over whether ad­vanced AI could es­cape hu­man con­trol and ul­ti­mate­ly threat­en hu­man­i­ty’s sur­vival, and whether the com­pa­nies de­vel­op­ing the tech­nol­o­gy are do­ing enough to pre­vent such a sce­nario.

The CEO of An­throp­ic, the San Fran­cis­co com­pa­ny be­hind Claude, said he thought the in­dus­try need­ed to re­duce the speed of its work, cau­tion­ing Sat­ur­day that a swarm of AI agents might be able to take over the in­ter­net in six months to a year un­less com­pa­nies de­vot­ed more time to putting safe­guards in place.

Lead­ers of top AI com­pa­nies say the ar­ti­fi­cial-in­tel­li­gence in­dus­try should slow its fast-mov­ing de­vel­op­ment to give safe­ty mea­sures time to catch up. With­out such a slow­down, An­throp­ic CEO Dario Amod­ei warned that AI could be ca­pa­ble with­in six to 12 months of lead­ing a swarm of agents that could take over the en­tire in­ter­net. (Pro­duced by Elaine Car­roll)