Nobel laureates call for strict regulation of AI, CIO News, ET CIO

Nobel physics laureate Geoffrey Hinton and chemistry laureate Demis Hassabis on Saturday insisted on the need for strict regulation of artificial intelligence, which played a key role in their awards.

“AI is a very important technology to regulate, but I think it’s very important that we have good regulation and I think that’s what’s difficult right now, it’s a technology that is evolving very quickly,” Hassabis said at a press conference in Stockholm.

Hassabis, who won the prize jointly with Americans David Baker and John Jumper for unlocking the secrets of proteins using AI, said such speed of evolution posed a big challenge.

But the underlying question, he said, is “what do we want to use these systems for, how do we want to deploy them and ensure that all of humanity benefits from what these systems can do?” “.

British-Canadian Hinton, considered the “godfather of AI”, admitted: “I wish I had thought about security sooner”, referring to his fears about the potential of AI to accelerate the arms race.

Hinton, who made headlines when he left Google last year and warned of the dangers that machines could one day outwit people, received his Nobel alongside American John Hopfield for his work on artificial neural networks.

“Governments do not want to self-regulate when it comes to lethal autonomous weapons and there is an arms race between all the major arms suppliers like the United States, China, Russia, Great -Brittany and Israel.

Hassabis said he recommended governments develop “quick and flexible regulations.”

He said he advised governments and civil society to rely on regulations in areas such as health and transportation, “and see how technology evolves and then adapt quickly to the “development of the situation”.

He told AFP he had discussions with Elon Musk about the “existential threat” posed by inappropriate use of AI and indicated the tech billionaire was concerned about AI’s potential to take away the control to humans.

He added that he was confident Musk would “communicate this to Trump and his administration” when Donald Trump returns to the White House in January.

But he cautioned that he was not sure whether Trump’s entire team was necessarily sufficiently aware of the risks involved, adding that he believed Musk himself was not a “particularly moral” person.