US President Donald Trump has said fears about the safety of artificial intelligence (AI) are a “hoax”, as he criticised calls to have more guardrails in place for the fast-moving technology.
It comes after Jack Clark, co-founder of AI giant Anthropic, told the BBC that a “kill switch” that can be checked by a third party may need to be mandatory for the industry.
Clark’s comments followed warnings about the risks the technology poses to humanity that have been raised in recent days by several executives and staff at leading AI firms.
Those concerns triggered a selloff in tech firms’ shares as investors weighed the impact of a potential slowdown in the multi-billion dollar development of AI.
Trump also called himself “the Hoax Buster”, likening concerns about the safety of the technology to what he called “the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX”.
The only “guardrails” needed for AI was a “strong and smart” president, said Trump.
In another post he wrote: “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!”
Chinese state media said experts had warned that “Washington’s growing anxiety over China’s rapid AI development appears to be increasingly distorting its policy priorities”.
“They know that China has become a strong competitor in AI, and worry that if the US slows down development or tightens regulation, China could catch up even faster,” Xin Qiang, a professor of American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times.
Clark, who is one of Anthropic’s seven founders, said earlier on Monday that a way of shutting off AI software completely if it gets too dangerous was something society “might want to eventually pass rules around”.
He added that “most labs have different ways of being able to pull the plug”, including Anthropic, but said lawmakers may need to enforce having one.
UK Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said on Tuesday that people should “never be complacent” about the impact AI might have but added: “We’ve got to be careful not to get hyperbolic about this either.”
Speaking to the BBC, he said: “Of course there are risks but, let’s be frank, there are some tremendous upsides, whether it’s public services, healthcare, the contribution to the economy.”
A growing number of tech industry and political figures are calling for better safeguards, most recently Microsoft AI which this week discussed limiting the models it is developing in a document on what it called “humanist AI”.
Microsoft AI’s chief executive Mustafa Suleyman told business news channel CNBC that it had been working on the new guidance for months and had decided to publish it now due to the current debate around the technology.
In an indication of how concerns over the technology have been thrust into the spotlight, two high-profile figures on opposite sides of US politics are set to appear at the same event calling for a re-evaluation of AI policy.
Former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and veteran progressive Senator Bernie Sanders are due to speak at the “Pro-Human Assembly” in Washington on Tuesday.
According to its website the gathering “aims to define a shared vision and articulate a better, more human-centric path for AI development”.
ReutersSanders told BBC’s Newsnight last week that “we have got to do something immediately to stop the uncontrolled growth of AI”.
“You’ve got the existential threat of the possibility of humanity being wiped out,” he said.
The debate over the potential dangers posed by the technology intensified in recent days after a post by Jacob Coxon, a researcher who left Anthropic over concerns AI could wipe out humanity, went viral.
In response, Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger said he thought the possibility of AI causing human extinction “within the next decade” was more than 10%.
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei called for the pace of AI development to slow and be more closely monitored, as the company has done before, though some have questioned the motivations behind this.
Amodei also said that any action to rein in AI should be done “without sacrificing commercial advantage”.
The bosses of two rival AI firms, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of xAI, have also said they agree with Amodei’s proposal for industry-wide deceleration and regulation, as well as independent monitoring of AI model development.
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