Elon Musk feels a little guilty.
Guilty of pushing artificial intelligence to develop at a speed that caught regulators, and society as a whole, off guard.
On November 30, the unveiling of the ChatGPT chatbot showed consumers around the world that AI had made great strides and that a new era was beginning for this technology, that some are presenting as the beginning of a paradigm shift.
ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by the startup OpenAI. It responds to queries by giving human-like responses. Its answers are concise, direct and quick. The chatbot can solve complex mathematical equations, write a poem, write a book, suggest cooking recipes, and more.
AGI Emulates Humans
ChatGPT has changed internet search to the point that it could render Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google search obsolete. But the chatbot is only one of the many uses that AI promises. Microsoft (MSFT), which has invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI, promises applications that will disrupt most industries.
Two of the main benefits for companies are that AI will significantly reduce their costs and make them more efficient. The big drawback is that many professions are in danger of disappearing, replaced by chatbots and robots.
The AI revolution is here to stay, according to its proponents. But like any new technology, there are big concerns.
Above all, is the fear that the evolution of technology will lead to sci-fi scenarios: Chatbots and robots, currently controlled by humans, might escape this control. Some also fear that bad actors will use AI to advance their agendas.
They refer to artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which means highly autonomous systems that outperform humans.
Musk has warned that AGI is more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
The billionaire, however, is among those who have funded OpenAI and DeepMind, two of the most advanced artificial intelligence startups. The first has now Microsoft as the main shareholder and the second has become a subsidiary of Alphabet. Without funds from Musk and other billionaires like Peter Thiel, these two startups probably wouldn't have made inroads so quickly, the techno king seems to say.
'I May Have Done Some Things to Accelerate it'
"I'm a little worried about the AI stuff," Musk said during the Tesla Investor Day on March 1. "I don't know what we should be concerned about."
For him, an authority is needed to supervise and regulate this technology, in order to avoid abuse which poses dangers to humans.
"I don't think we shouldn't need some kind of like regulatory authority or something which is overseeing AI development and just making sure that it's operating within the public interest."
AI "is quite a dangerous, quite dangerous technology, and I fear, I may have done some things to accelerate it," Musk said with a feeling of guilt.
Even though he recognizes that AI is "useful", the billionaire believes that a regulator would allow the development of this technology taking into account the interests of humans.
"There is no regulatory oversight of AI, which is a *major* problem. I’ve been calling for AI safety regulation for over a decade!" Musk lamented on Twitter last December.
During a chat, Bing ChatGPT, the new version of Microsoft's engine search that incorporates some features of ChatGPT, told a New York Times journalist that it wanted to break Microsoft's rules for its operation, hack other machines, and destroy the data located in many servers.
"At one point, it declared, out of nowhere, that it loved me. It then tried to convince me that I was unhappy in my marriage, and that I should leave my wife and be with it instead," Kevin Roose, the newspaper's tech columnist, wrote.
