This article on Yahoo Finance contains a warning by Paul Christiano, a former researcher at OpenAI, that AI "could soon surpass human capabilities", and that there is a non-zero chance that human- or superhuman-level A.I. could take control of humanity and even annihilate it." He said that ". “I think maybe there's a 10 to 20% chance of A.I. takeover [with] many, most humans dead.”

We are not talking about the usual doomsayers here, but an expert in the field, so his warning should not be taken lightly.

This piece on the BBC, reports on the resignation from Google of Geoffrey Hinton, widely considered the godfather of artificial intelligence. In his resignation letter he warns about the growing dangers of AI, and says that he now regrets his work.

This article on Venture Beat, by Louis Rosenberg (also an expert in the field of AI) not only outlines three of the better known risks posed by AI (the risk to jobs, the risk of fake content and the risk of sentient machines), but adds another to the list: AI generated interactive media, which will be way more targeted and manipulative than what we have today. This could take propaganda to a whole new level. This seems to me to be a very serious risk, and one that would bypass consumers' resistance to advertising and utterly undermine democracy. I also dread to think what might happen if/when crooks start to use AI to scam people.

Despite these and many other warnings, corporations are ploughing ahead with AI development (AI is getting smarter all the time) and deployment (AI is now accessible to all of us), and governments are doing nothing. Apparently, we are too stupid to save ourselves (as also seems to be the case with climate change).