Warnings from AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton make the risks of artificial intelligence harder to dismiss – and the case for robust controls much harder to postpone.

I don’t know about you, but I need help sorting through all the existential threats facing us right now to work out which ones I really need to worry about.

Until this week, AI had been firmly in the ’need to know a lot more but no need to panic’ part of my brain. Perhaps this was just an overload response, but I found the ’every new technology has its enemies’ line pretty convincing.

And besides, for every bad story there seemed to be a good one: job losses versus life-saving health applications, university essays by ChatGPT versus an invaluable research tool. AI is a wickedly complex topic........

© Pearls and Irritations