Robots could end up controlling humanity, the founder of artificial intelligence firm Stability AI, Emad Mostaque, has warned. In an interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, Mostaque said that this could happen in a "worst case scenario" and humans could be told "goodbye, you're kind of boring".
He added that governments could soon be forced to regulate the machines by an event that suddenly makes their impact real.
Mostaque believes that if robots become more capable than humans, democracy could be threatened. He said, "If you have a more capable thing than you, what is democracy in that kind of environment? This is a known unknown because we can't conceive of something more capable than us but we all know people more capable than us."
He compared the scenario to the movie "Her", where humans are deemed "boring" by their AI counterparts. Mostaque said, "The worst-case scenario is that it proliferates and basically it controls humanity because you could have a million things replicating effectively, but we don't know."
Like Joaquin Phoenix's character in "Her" has an AI bot for a girlfriend, the technology is now here that an influencer has launched an AI chatbot for her fans that replicates the 23-year-old's voice, mannerisms, and personality, allowing fans to chat with her "clone", in an “immersive AI experience” for $1 per minute that seems like a conversation with the influencer herself.
Mostaque believes that the impact of new machines could be "painful" to begin with and their effect on the economy could be greater than that caused by the pandemic. However, he thinks that the jobs which disappear will be replaced by better ones because machines will do menial tasks, while allowing humans to concentrate on other things.
The founder of Stability AI believes that the moment a similar event arrives with artificial intelligence; governments will conclude "we need policy now". He claims that the new technology could also bring "huge" benefits and that companies such as ChatGPT and DeepMind will be bigger than Google and Facebook in ten years' time.
Read: This influencer's AI chatbot gives the 'girlfriend experience' for $1 per minute
Mostaque believes in keeping his technology open source, allowing anyone to look at the code, share it, and use it. He thinks this step can instill confidence in people that technology will not become too dangerous. He said, "If you build open models and you do it in the open, you should be criticized if you do things wrong and hopefully lauded if you do some things right."
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