Expert opinions on Existential Risk

Physicists faced a version of this problem in the 1950s. No single lab could afford the machine they needed, so they pooled resources and built one together, with shared data and shared credit. This piece sketches what the same move could look like f...

It is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced. That’s why I am introducing legislation to immediately pause the development of increasingly powerful AI and ban the creation of systems that hu...

For a long time many of us thought of RSI as the way AGI turns into superintelligence. [...] I was advocating what I called a semi-hard takeoff: a period where the self-improvement was real but not that fast, followed by a point -- once the AGI fully...

I do not think this will happen. I don’t think that automating AI R&D will rapidly produce domain-general superintelligence. I don’t think that a data centre of geniuses, largely separated from the rest of the economy, will figure out how to cure Alz...

AI is already on the verge of going rogue, but with legal person status, it could become an actual existential threat to humanity.

We have to change the way we talk about AI risk because for a very long time, it’s either existential and everything is going to die and the killer robots are coming, or it doesn’t really matter.

We do need to have some safeguards in place to make sure there are no unintended consequences, but, no, I do not think AI is going to imperil human existence.

I believe it’s an engineering problem ... and we all need to hope that’s an engineering problem. If it’s not an engineering problem, it’s not solvable.

Many AI researchers grant these concerns and recognize that the hard version of the alignment problem is unsolved; however, they generally believe that the better models of the future will help solve it. I fear we may already be near the point where ...

But alignment is no solution: it is an unsolved scientific and technical problem whose solutions—to the extent that we have them—cannot simply be imposed on every AI company operating on Earth.

To declare today’s AI conscious simply because it speaks fluently would go far beyond the available evidence. But to declare that a machine could never become conscious would also claim more certainty than science presently allows.

“I would be surprised if current AI models develop consciousness,” he said, “but we can’t entirely rule it out.”

Personally, I do not believe that AI can be conscious, and below I explain why.

This suggests pacing the advances: not training or deploying AIs without a strong safety case that convinces independent experts.

I believe that attempting to deliberately pace AI development will be extremely difficult, and could do more harm than good if done without proper care. However, I am signing this statement because, if an attempt at pacing does occur, it would be bet...

We will only encourage super intelligence. We’re going to encourage it, not rein it in.

The term “open-weight AI model” means an AI model for which the model weights are made publicly available without restriction on access. [...] “meaningful uplift” means specific operational assistance that would materially advance an adversary’s CBRN...

They tried to pass laws to stifle [free open-source AI software]. ... After that narrative lost credibility, and our government no longer believes that, thank God, the same people said, “Oh, AI could create bioweapons.” After the RAND and other studi...