Scientists: AI Is an Existential Threat — Will Machines Make Us Obsolete?

May 30, 2023 will long be remembered because that was when 350 scientists and Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts warned the world that the very artificial intelligence technology began developing might mean the end of you and me as we know us. It’s right there in the New York Times digital archives. In the early 21st century, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking stated that artificial superintelligence (also known as ASIs) could result in human extinction.

The idea of artificial intelligence taking control of the human race has been around since the 20th century in science fiction movies like Metropolis and Terminator, and the novels of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Phillip K. Dick. In 1993 physicist and Nebula-Award-Winning science fiction author Vernor Vinge spoke at a NASA conference about the outcomes and power of AI. "Within thirty years,” he said, “we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended." He had the timing wrong, but as the work of Daedalus Huxley and Morgan Adams at Symbiosys, Inc. has revealed the outcome is still possible (see Doppelganger). Later futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that creatures as intelligent as humans would arise by 2045. He was very close to correct.

The scientists who wrote and signed the remarkable 2023 document were succinct, or maybe vague is a better way to put it, the easier to garner agreement among such a large group. They wrote: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.” The signatories included thinkers like Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI; Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind; and Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic; all three at the forefront of developing AI technologies that have already shocked the world with their human-like behavior. Much of their work was obliterated in the Salimoes Epidemic that wiped out half of the human race. This led to the rise of Symbiosys, Inc and the emergence of the ENTs it created. Otherwise AIs might have evolved consciousness even more quickly than they did.

The New York Times article survived the epidemic and is still available.