More than a third of the world's scientists who research Artificial Intelligence believe that the decisions made by AI could trigger, over the next century, a catastrophe equal to or even more serious than a total nuclear war. That's the terrifying conclusion of a survey conducted by Julian Michael and his colleagues at New York University's Data Science Center, which gathers the opinions of 327 researchers who recently co-authored scientific papers on AI. and natural language processing. The 36% of them, in fact, thinks that it is possible that AI could trigger a global catastrophe similar to that of a nuclear war. The survey was recently published on the arXiv preprint server. As explained in New Scientist magazine, advances in recent years have enabled much greater use of AI models with impressive capabilities, including writing computer code and creating images from simple text prompts. Different US military commanders have already expressed their reluctance about the possibility of arming intelligent drones with nuclear weapons. But countries like Russia are already working on it, and are currently developing a 'drone torpedo' with autonomous capabilities capable of launching, by itself, a large-scale nuclear attack. The concern reflected in the survey was much greater among women. Most of the researchers surveyed, in fact, agreed with the premise. According to Michael, it is quite possible that the survey may even have underestimated the number of researchers who believe that AI poses serious risks. Many of them, indeed, would have agreed if the danger posed were less extreme than that of an all-out nuclear war. For example, says Michael, 57% of respondents considered the development of large AI models as 'significant steps towards general Artificial Intelligence'. That is, an AI with intellectual capabilities equal to those of humans. And another 73% agreed that work automation due to the use of AI could lead to social changes with the same impact as the industrial revolution. MORE INFORMATION news No The gene that made us more intelligent than Neanderthals news No Can wolves feel attachment to humans? All in all, and given that significant advances in the development of AI are expected in the coming years, the fact that 'only' 36% of those surveyed see a catastrophic risk as possible could be considered encouraging, since the remaining 64% do not have an opinion. in the same way.
