In an era of rapid advancement in technology, this is accompanied by the emergence of artificial intelligence technology and chatbots. This technology raises important questions about potential risks and impacts on society and information.
Aidan Gomez, co-author of a paper that helped create the technology behind chatbots, said long-term risks, such as existential threats to humanity from artificial intelligence, should be “studied and pursued,” but they may distract politicians from dealing with potential immediate risks.
Artificial intelligence — a term that refers to computer systems that can perform tasks typically associated with intelligent beings — was already widely used, Gomez said, and the summit should focus on its applications, especially since chatbots like ChatGPT and image generators like Midjourney have dazzled the audience with their ability. Produces believable text and images through simple text prompts.
He added: “This technology is already present in a billion user products, as is the case at Google and others. This represents a set of new risks that must be discussed. We should focus directly on the parts that are about to affect people, rather than academic and theoretical discussion about the future.” The long-term".
Gomez said misinformation — the spread of misleading or incorrect information online — was his main concern.
“It is misinformation that is at the top of my concerns,” he explained. “These [AI] models can create media that is very convincing, and is virtually indistinguishable from text, images or human-generated media. This is something we need to address urgently.”
Gomez is participating in the two-day Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit, which begins next Wednesday, in his capacity as CEO of Cohere, an American company that makes artificial intelligence tools for businesses, including chatbots.
In 2017, when Gomez was 20, he was part of a team of researchers at Google who created Transformer, a key technology behind the large language models that power artificial intelligence tools like chatbots.
The opening day of the summit will include discussions on a range of AI issues, including concerns related to misinformation such as the disruption of elections and the erosion of social trust.
The second day, which will bring together a smaller group of countries, experts and technology executives, will discuss concrete steps that can be taken to address AI risks.
Concerns about the existential threat from artificial intelligence center around the potential emergence of so-called artificial general intelligence — a term that refers to an artificial intelligence system capable of performing multiple tasks at or above human level intelligence — that could theoretically replicate itself, or avoid... Human control and decision-making that conflict with human interests.
These concerns led to the publication of an open letter in March, signed by more than 30,000 technology professionals and experts, including Elon Musk, calling for a six-month pause in giant artificial intelligence experiments.