OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has warned that AI could achieve the power of superintelligence by the end of this decade which could also be very dangerous as it could lead to the disempowerment of humanity or even human extinction.

“Superintelligence will be the most impactful technology humanity has ever invented and could help us solve many of the world’s most important problems. But the vast power of superintelligence could also be very dangerous and could lead to the disempowerment of humanity or even human extinction. While superintelligence seems far off now, we believe it could arrive this decade,” OpenAI said in a blogpost.

The company, which is at the forefront of developing generative AI technology said, “Currently, we don’t have a solution for steering or controlling a potentially superintelligent AI, and preventing it from going rogue. Our current techniques for aligning AI, such as reinforcement learning from human feedback, rely on humans’ ability to supervise AI… We need new scientific and technical breakthroughs.”

Out-of-control race

Earlier this year, prominent experts asked artificial intelligence labs to immediately pause the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT for at least six months.  The letter signed by the tech doyens stated that as AI labs are locked in an out-of-control race to develop even more powerful digital minds, proper planning management is not happening to appraise and control the consequences of such technologies.

In response to OpenAI’s blogpost, Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said, “In less than 7 years, we have a system that may lead to the disempowerment of humanity and even human extinction. I am genuinely concerned with the power some set of people and select countries have accumulated - already.”

OpenAI said it is assembling a team of top machine learning researchers and engineers to work on this problem. 

“We are dedicating 20 per cent of the computing power we’ve secured to date over the next four years to solving the problem of superintelligence alignment. Our chief basic research bet is our new superalignment team, but getting this right is critical to achieve our mission and we expect many teams to contribute, from developing new methods to scaling them up to deployment,” OpenAI said.

Related Topics