AI can transform health care, workplace, making movies AND education — but its power can also be devastating in the wrong hands.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt elaborated on the dangers of AI on Monday's episode Prof. G Pod podcast with NYU professor, entrepreneur and author Scott Galloway. Although Schmidt emphasized that AI improves productivity for almost everyone, he also acknowledged that the technology could be used to harm human beings in the future.
“The most obvious is their use in biology,” Schmidt said. “Could these systems, at some point in the future, generate biological pathogens that could harm many, many, many, many people?”
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Today they can't, but there are “many people” who believe AI will be able to create harmful biological materials in the future, according to Schmidt. These people are working on preventing AI from being used as a biological weapon, he said.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Photo by Shahar Azran/Getty Images
Schmidt also noted that AI opens the door to widespread cyberattacks that could destroy a country's entire financial system, for example.
“(AI) systems are so powerful that we are quite concerned that in addition to democracies using them for gain, dictators will use them to amass power,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt was CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011. In August, he made headlines by stating that remote work was the reason Google was falling behind in the AI race in a Stanford University speech. He later apologized for misspeaking; Stanford removed the video of the conversation, which garnered over 40,000 views in less than a day.
Schmidt isn't the only executive raising concerns about AI. Sahil Agarwal, a Yale PhD in applied mathematics who co-founded and currently runs the AI security startup Cryptosaid The entrepreneur at the beginning of this year that as AI systems become more complex, the potential for them to contain implicit bias and toxic content increases.
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