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San Francisco. – The swift growth of artificial intelligence technology could put the future of humanity at risk, according to most Americans surveyed in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published yesterday.
More than two-thirds of Americans are concerned about the negative effects of AI and 61 percent believe it could threaten civilization.
Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot became the fastest growing application of all time, the widespread integration of AI into everyday life has catapulted AI to the forefront of public discourse. ChatGPT has kicked off an AI arms race, with tech heavyweights like Microsoft and Google vying to outdo each other’s AI accomplishments.
According to the data, 61% of respondents believe that AI poses risks to humanity, while only 22% disagreed, and 17% remained unsure.
Those who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 expressed higher levels of concern; 70 percent of Trump voters compared to 60 percent of Joe Biden voters agreed that AI could threaten humankind.
When it came to religious beliefs, Evangelical Christians were more likely to “strongly agree” that AI presents risks to humanity, standing at 32% compared to 24% of non-Evangelical Christians.
“It’s telling such a broad swatch of Americans worry about the negative effects of AI,” said Landon Klein, director of US policy of the Future of Life Institute, the organization behind an open letter, co-signed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, demanding a six-month pause in AI research. “We view the current moment similar to the beginning of the nuclear era, and we have the benefit of public perception that is consistent with the need to take action.”
While Americans are concerned about AI, crime and the economy rank higher in the list of kitchen table issues: 77 percent support increasing police funding to fight crime and 82 percent are worried about the risk of a recession.
Those in the industry said the public should understand AI’s benefits more.
“The concerns are very legitimate, but I think what’s missing in the dialogue in general is why are we doing this in the first place?” asked Sebastian Thrun, a computer science professor at Stanford who founded Google X.
“AI will raise peoples’ quality of life, and help people be more competent and more efficient.”
The positive applications of AI, such as revolutionizing drug discovery, are not as visible as ChatGPT, said Ion Stoica, a UC Berkeley professor who also co-founded AI company Anyscale.
“Americans may not realize how pervasive AI already is in their daily lives, both at home and at work,” he said. – Reuters
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