An AI expert has said concerns that the technology could pose a threat to humanity are "preposterously ridiculous."
"Will AI take over the world? No, this is a projection of human nature on machines," Yann LeCun said. He made the comment at a press event in Paris on Tuesday, which was reported on by BBC News.
The so-called AI "godfather" was part of the three-person team with Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton that won the Turing Award in 2018 for breakthroughs in machine learning. He is now Meta's chief AI scientist.
LeCun said at Tuesday's event there was "no question" that in the future, computers would become more intelligent than humans but that this was years or even potentially decades away, per The BBC.
The recent proliferation of generative AI, which includes chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing and image makers like DALL-E and Midjourney, has led to a heated debate among experts over whether it is developing too quickly. Concerns include AI's ability to develop bias and to "hallucinate," as well as its role in the spread of misinformation and deepfake images.
Some tech leaders, scientists, and influential business figures have called for closer global regulation of AI and more focus on ethics. LeCun's collaborator Bengio, Elon Musk, and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak were among the signatories of an open letter earlier this year urging a six-month pause on advanced AI development.
Numerous AI experts also signed a statement by the Center for AI Safety last month, which said that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."
In a survey of top CEOs by Yale's Chief Executive Leadership Institute, reported on by CNN, 34% of respondents said that AI could "destroy humanity" in 10 years and 8% said it could even happen within five years. Fifty-eight percent said they didn't think the potential catastrophe of AI was overstated.
Some figures with influence in the tech world, however, have lauded the many use cases of AI and warned against introducing a moratorium on its development. Bill Gates, for example, said that while there were understandable concerns about AI, it could have major positive effects on healthcare, education, and the fight against the climate crisis. Marc Andreessen warned against "full-blown moral panic about AI" and said that people have a "moral obligation" to encourage its development.
LeCun said on Tuesday that it would be a mistake to keep AI research "under lock and key." AI would become increasingly reliable and safe, he said.
He added that concerns about AI were overstated and if people realized the technology wasn't safe they shouldn't build it, per BBC News.
