A pioneer of AI has criticised calls to grant the technology rights, warning that it was showing signs of self-preservation and humans should be prepared to pull the plug if needed.
Yoshua Bengio said giving legal status to cutting-edge AIs would be akin to giving citizenship to hostile extraterrestrials, amid fears that advances in the technology were far outpacing the ability to constrain them.
The Canadian computer scientist also expressed concern that AI models – the technology that underpins tools like chatbots – were showing signs of self-preservation, such as trying to disable oversight systems. A core concern among AI safety campaigners is that powerful systems could develop the capability to evade guardrails and harm humans.
“People demanding that AIs have rights would be a huge mistake,” said Bengio. “Frontier AI models already show signs of self-preservation in experimental settings today, and eventually giving them rights would mean we’re not allowed to shut them down.
“We asked spicy autocomplete to come up with a story about an AI that is self-preserving and the story was really scary and we are very concerned.”
I am also very concerned; because this apparently qualifies as research and people seem to take this drivel seriously.
I really liked that dude that at the start of his presentation introduced a little dude he had drawn on paper, gave it a name and did a skit with it. He then beheaded the little dude and proceeded to proclaim he was dead. The audience did a D: and were shocked and appalled. He then proceeded to explain that’s exactly what humans always do and how we treat AI. Our brains automatically anthropomorphise anything and everything. We assign properties based on feelings and not what it really is. The audience got it right away, really convincing demo. I don’t remember who it was, but it was so good to watch it happen with the audience there.