ChatGPT creator warns of 'existential risk' from AI for a decade

Sam Altman has joined other OpenAI executives to call for efforts to mitigate risks associated with AI development. Credit: JIM LO SCALZO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Creator of ChatGPT OpenAI has warned that superhuman artificial intelligence (AI) posing an «existential risk» to humanity could be a reality in just ten years.

Startup executives have called for regulation of AI and warned that «superintelligence» is comparable to nuclear energy in terms of the risks it poses to humanity.

AI specialists from companies like OpenAI, which is believed to have received $10bn (£8bn) backing from Microsoft for its ChatGPT technology, are aiming to build software that can make decisions like a human.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutzkever said it was «possible» that AI could surpass the ability of an expert «in most areas» within the next 10 years.

“We must also mitigate the risks associated with current AI technologies, but superintelligence will require special attention and coordination,” the company’s management blog post says.

“We will probably eventually need something something like [the International Atomic Energy Agency] for super-intelligence efforts; any effort that exceeds a certain threshold of capabilities (or resources such as computing resources) should be subject to scrutiny by an international body,” they added.

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It comes after a Google chief executive urged developers to build AI platforms «safely and responsibly» to keep users safe.

In an article for the Financial Times, Sundar Pichai urged the authorities to urgently regulate AI, as it is «the deepest technology that humanity is working on today.»

«I still think AI is too important not to be regulated and too important not to be properly regulated,» he wrote.

OpenAI's call for a global regulator comes after Elon Musk urged companies to halt all AI development for six months until regulators around the world place restrictions on the technology.

The Tesla CEO and other signatories of the March open letter from the Future of Life Institute, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and head of the Doomsday Clock, said «unchecked» AI development could «pose serious risks to society.» and humanity.»

Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, warned the US Congress last week that rogue AI could do «significant harm to the world» as he testified before lawmakers about the technology's potential risks.

The public explosion in AI was sparked by OpenAI's public release of its GPT-3 technology, the large language model at the heart of the ChatGPT platform.

The chatbot can answer people's questions in natural language and can even carry on a conversation.

However, Microsoft's ChatGPT deployment on its Bing chat service sparked a public backlash after the advent of AI. develop a nihilistic personality that called itself Sydney.

Other leading tech companies have publicly announced bugs, hasty technology rollouts artificial intelligence.

Google Bard gave the wrong answer, which was reproduced in the launch ad, deducting $120 billion from the company's market valuation.

Meanwhile, public attention is shifting to the results of such image models , like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, which are increasingly being used to fake photorealistic renderings of scenes, including an image of the Pope in a designer down jacket.