One of the three "godfathers of AI" has claimed that the technology won't take over the world or eliminate jobs for good.
Professor Yann LeCun referred to some experts' concerns that AI could endanger humanity as "preposterously ridiculous.".
In many years, computers would surpass human intelligence, but he added that "if you realize it's not safe you just don't build it.".
According to a recent BBC report, some extremely potent artificial intelligence may need to be outlawed.
For their AI innovations, Prof. LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, and Geoffrey Hinton shared the 2018 Turing Award, earning the title of "the godfathers of AI.".
At Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, Prof. LeCun is currently the head AI scientist. His fellow godfathers agree that AI poses a threat to the human race, but he disagrees.
No, he said, "AI will not take over the world; this is simply the projection of human nature onto machines.". Keeping AI research "under lock and key" would be a grave error, he continued.
Prof. LeCun argued that people who expressed concern that AI might be dangerous to people did so because they were unable to envision how it could be made secure.
"It's like asking someone in 1930 how you're going to make a turbo-jet safe; turbo-jets weren't invented yet, just like human-level AI wasn't invented yet. ".
The same would happen with AI, he predicted. "Turbo jets were eventually made incredibly reliable and safe.".
Producing intelligent machines with human-level capabilities is one of the objectives of Meta's extensive AI research program. The business employs AI in addition to research to identify harmful social media posts.
Prof. LeCun discussed his own work in so-called Objective Driven AI, which aims to create secure systems that can remember, reason, plan, and have common sense—features that well-known chatbots like ChatGPT lack. He spoke at a press-only event for invited media.
There was "no doubt," he insisted, that AI would eventually outperform human intelligence. However, it would take years, if not decades, for researchers to complete the necessary concepts and reach that level.
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the term used when people express worries about future machines that could be intelligent on a human level or higher. Similar to humans, these systems are capable of resolving a variety of issues.
Scientists were worried that if AGI existed, they would be able to "turn on a super-intelligent system that is going to take over the world within minutes," he said. "That's just absurdly preposterous, you know. ".
In response to a query from BBC News, Prof. LeCun stated that there would be gradual advancements, and perhaps one day an AI as powerful as a rat's brain might be developed. He argued that since it wasn't going to take over the world, "it's still going to run on a data center somewhere with an off switch.". And you just don't build it if you realize it's not safe, he continued.
a negative effect on employment.
Many jobs could potentially be replaced by AI, according to some arguments, so some businesses have stopped hiring for specific positions.
This won't permanently put a lot of people out of work, Prof. LeCun assured the BBC. We "have no idea" what the most well-known jobs will be in 20 years, he claimed, so work would change.
According to him, intelligent computers would bring about "a new renaissance for humanity" in the same way that the internet or the printing press did.
Tuesday's speech by Prof. LeCun came before a vote on the AI Act for Europe, which is intended to regulate artificial intelligence.
"They don't like it at all, they think it's too broad, maybe too restrictive," he claimed, quoting his conversations with AI start-ups in Europe. He claimed, however, to lack legal expertise.
Prof. LeCun declared that while he was not opposed to regulation, he believed that each application would require its own set of guidelines. For instance, he thought that there should be different guidelines for AI systems used in cars and those that scan medical images.
