Steve Wozniak Sounds AI Alarm Again — Echoes Musk, Hinton's Fears

Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak has reiterated his position by issuing stark warnings against unhindered development of artificial intelligence, something tech experts like Elon Musk and Geoffrey Hinton, better known as the “Godfather Of AI” agrees with.

What Happened: Wozniak expressed his concerns about the potential misuse of AI by unscrupulous individuals who could exploit its intelligence to deceive people, making it more challenging to detect scams and misinformation. 

“AI is so intelligent it’s open to the bad players, the ones that want to trick you about who they are,” he told the BBC.

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According to Wozniak, AI lacks emotion and therefore, he does not think it will replace humans. However, he did express concern that AI will make “bad actors” even more convincing due to the ability of programs like OpenAI’s chatGPT, backed by Microsoft Corp MSFT, to create text that “sounds so intelligent.”

Wozniak further stated that the responsibility for AI-generated programs lies with their publishers. “A human really has to take responsibility for what is generated by AI.” 

He also urged regulators to hold big tech firms accountable for their actions but subsequently expressed skepticism, saying, “The forces that drive for money usually win out, which is sort of sad.”

Last week, following the earnings release, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company is taking a measured and cautious approach to AI development, emphasizing the importance of being “deliberate and thoughtful” when dealing with the technology. 

Why It’s Important: In March, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur joined 1000+ individuals, including Musk, to sign an “open letter” advocating for a six-month halt for developing AI systems “more powerful” than GPT-4. 

Not only Wozniak and Musk but others like Hinton, who left Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOGL subsidiary Google saying he wanted to talk more freely about the risks posed by the technology, said that risks posed by AI to humanity could be more pressing than those of climate change.

However, there’s another camp of tech experts like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Jürgen Schmidhuber, once described as the “Father of AI” who said that the calls to halt AI developments are misdirected. 

Gates has previously compared the innovation of OpenAI’s chatGPT with the invention of the internet. 

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