AI Will Not Kill Us All, Says OpenAI's CEO

Here's what you need to know about an artificial intelligence Twitter beef. 

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Bringing AI to the table

There’s one unavoidable question for humanity as the tech industry marches toward ever more brilliant artificial intelligence technologies: Is this good news, or is this bad news?

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There is a small but powerful group of people in Silicon Valley who believe that AI could cause humanity to go extinct within a few decades if it is not handled correctly. In other words, if AI is not handled correctly, humankind could go extinct within a couple of decades. Then there are those who think our AI future will be huge - bringing about untold future possibilities, abundance, and utopian ideals in the form of unimaginable capabilities.

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The world is faced with a killer in a quest to keep it safe, and this week, I take you inside the tech industry's scramble to keep the world safe from this killer in a piece. Sam Bankman-Fried and Elon Musk are involved in a story that combines effective altruism with a philosophique known as doomerism, which involves the marriage of altruism and artificial intelligence, and does not disappoint. Apocalyptic doomsday religion is also tipped off with allegations of sexual abuse and has a whiff of an apocalyptic underbelly.

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Silicon Valley's obsession with the astronomical stakes of future artificial intelligence has led to a bitter feud in the last few years as a result of the astronomical stakes. Currently, that schism between two people is playing out online right now between two people: AI theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky and Open AI's CEO Sam Altman, who are both at the center of this schism. In the early 2000s, Yudkowsky started raising alarms that artificial general intelligence is likely to become unaligned with human values and might decide to wipe us out if left unchecked. It was as a result of his aggressive efforts that Musk was convinced to take the risk of the AI apocalypse seriously. In turn, he helped convince others to follow Musk's lead and adopt the prevention of the AI apocalypse as a priority. With the goal of creating safer artificial intelligence, Musk created OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit organization with Altman.

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OpenAI has churned out bigger, faster, and more advanced AI technology in recent years due to its for-profit model. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is being developed by the company, which has raised billions of dollars in investment. Altman has applauded the progress made toward AGI. "While we move towards AGIs and significant disruptions, the upsides can be so incredible that it's well worth overcoming the challenges," he tweeted in December.

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On the other hand, Yudkowsky admitted on a podcast last month that he has almost completely lost hope that humanity will be able to handle AI in a responsible manner. As he told, he cried on his own late at night after the creation of OpenAI, with its commitment to advancing AI development for all humanity, thinking, "Oh, so this is what humanity is going to choose to do in the future. This is not something we are going to rise above. Even here at the very end of our journey, we will not be able to have any more grace.”

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In light of that background, it was certainly rubbing salt in a wound when Altman tweeted recently that Yudkowsky had "done more to accelerate AI than anyone else" and may someday be worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize for the work he has done. The AI theorist was trolling Yudkowsky, saying that in trying to prevent his biggest fear, he had significantly accelerated its arrival.

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That's all there is to it. Inscrutable inside-baseball catfight between two AI thinkers - but it illustrates the all-or-nothing, salvation-or-damnation context underpinning much AI news these days.

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However, there is a chance that the beef isn't as beefy as we think it is. In a selfie he posted on Twitter last month, Altman posed flanked by Yudkowsky on one side and Elon Musk's former partner, Canadian singer Grimes, on the other side of the camera. At least for now, everyone can still hang out together at parties, no matter whether AI will kill us all in 20 years or not.