“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

The title is a partial quote from:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/16/tech/ai-apocalypse-warnings/index.html

Altman, whose company is behind the viral chatbot tool ChatGPT, joined Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Microsoft’s CTO Kevin Scott and dozens of other AI researchers and business leaders in signing a one-sentence letter last month stating: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

The stark warning was widely covered in the press, with some suggesting it showed the need to take such apocalyptic scenarios more seriously. But it also highlights an important dynamic in Silicon Valley right now: Top executives at some of the biggest tech companies are simultaneously telling the public that AI has the potential to bring about human extinction while also racing to invest in and deploy this technology into products that reach billions of people.