Existential risk
Existential risk, as used in these debates, is the risk that advanced AI causes human extinction or a permanent, catastrophic loss of human control over the future. The concern is that systems more capable than people could pursue goals at odds with human interests and be impossible to stop. How likely this is, and whether it deserves the attention it gets, is disputed among the people on this site.
Why it comes up
Hinton, Bengio, Altman, Amodei and Hassabis signed the May 2023 statement putting AI extinction risk alongside pandemics and nuclear war; LeCun and Ng call such scenarios overblown, and Gebru argues the focus distracts from harms AI causes now.
People and milestones
The Statement on AI Risk, 2023
The "Pause Giant AI Experiments" letter, 2023
Geoffrey Hinton
Yoshua Bengio
Yann LeCun
Andrew Ng
Timnit Gebru
Emily M. Bender
Geoffrey Hinton
Yoshua Bengio
Yann LeCun
Andrew Ng
Timnit Gebru
Emily M. Bender