‘Permanent dystopia’: Former OpenAI researcher warns of ‘reckless race’ for AI control

AI development companies like OpenAI and Google DeepMind are in a “reckless race” to build smarter AI systems that may soon become an “army of geniuses.” While that may seem like a good idea to those behind the technology, it might spell disaster for mankind.

“It’s going to be very thrilling — and also very scary,” former OpenAI researcher and AI Futures Project Executive Director Daniel Kokotajlo tells Glenn Beck on “The Glenn Beck Program.”

“It’s the stated intention of the CEOs of these companies to eventually build superintelligence,” he continues, noting that “superintelligence is fully autonomous AI systems that are better than humans at absolutely everything.”

“That sounds like a movie that we’ve all seen,” Glenn comments, concerned.

“They totally have seen those movies,” Kokotajlo says of those behind the push for superintelligence. “And they totally think, yes, it could go really bad. In fact, that’s part of the founding story of some of these companies.”

“Lots of people at these companies, especially early on, basically had similar thoughts of, ‘Wow, this is going to be the biggest thing ever. If it goes well, it could be the best thing that ever happens. If it goes poorly, it could literally kill everyone or do something similarly catastrophic like lead to a permanent dystopia,’” he continues.

One major issue that could lead to the latter is that those who end up running these companies or are in high-up positions at them are not the ones who are concerned about where this is all headed.

Those who are concerned — like Kokotajlo — are the ones who quit who walked away from millions in equity.

Kokotajlo tells Glenn that he walked away when he was told there was going to be a large focus on addressing questions like, “How do we make sure that we can control the AI when they’re smarter than us?” As time went on, he noticed there was little to no effort being put toward addressing these questions.

“That’s just an example of the sort of thing that made me quit,” he explains. “We’re going to build anyway, even though we don’t understand it, don’t know how to control it, and, you know, it’s going to be a disaster. That’s basically what caused me to leave.”

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