Warren Buffet is Deeply Concerned as He Compares AI Today to an Atom Bomb
Billionaire investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett said he is "deeply worried" about the rise of artificial intelligence while addressing the topic at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.
Comparing the revolutionary technology to the invention of atom bombs, he said, "When something can do all kinds of things, I get a little bit worried, because I know we won't be able to un-invent it and, you know, we did invent, for very, very good reason, the atom bomb in World War II."
"It was enormously important that we did so," Buffett continued, "but is it good for the next 200 years of the world that the ability to do so has been unleashed?" Buffett said he also believes AI will change "everything in the world, except how men think and behave." "And that’s a big step to take," he said.
Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Charlie Munger echoed the same sentiments during the annual meeting. "I am personally skeptical of some of the hype that is going into artificial intelligence," Munger said. "I think old-fashioned intelligence works pretty well."
The maverick investor and his business partner, Munger, discussed their views on advancing tech and AI during an intense discussion at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting. Buffett also revealed that he got a lesson on ChatGPT from his longtime friend Bill Gates. However, Buffett expressed his "fears" over the rapidly growing AI programs.
Even though the billionaire CEO revealed that he was impressed by AI's vast capabilities, including checking all legal opinions "since the beginning of time," he said he still feels apprehensive about future technology, as reported by New York Post.
Buffett and Munger are the growing voices among the top elites who have previously called out the harmful implications of artificial intelligence. Earlier Geoffrey Hinton, who is also known as the 'Godfather of A.I.' quit Google and expressed his regrets about inventing the advanced technology. Calling the involvement of A.I. in normal lives as "scary," he said, "The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that," he said. "But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that. Take the difference and propagate it forward. That's scary."
New York Post reports that more than 1,600 researchers and tech experts, including Space X and Tesla founder, Elon Musk, who was an early investor of Open AI, signed a letter in late March calling for "a six-month pause on AI development" because they claim it poses "profound risks to society and humanity." The experts revealed that OpenAI itself recently acknowledged it may soon be necessary to "get an independent review before starting to train future systems." "Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4," the letter said. "This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors," he concluded.
