Google Brain founder Andrew Ng says threat of AI causing human extinction is overblown

https://www.afr.com/technology/google-brain-founder-says-big-tech-is-lying-about-ai-human-extinction-danger-20231027-p5efnz

The notion that artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity is a “bad idea” being promulgated by big tech in the hope of triggering heavy regulation that would shut down competition in the AI market, one of the world’s top AI experts warned.

Andrew Ng, the famous Coursera co-founder, AI professor who tought hundreds of thousands online and also in person at Stanford University Machine Learning (including Sam Altmann, co-founder of OpenAI, and me in Coursera :-) ) today made a strong statement in an interview with the Australian Financial Review.

That he was very sceptical was obvious but he tried to showcase his usual diplomatic attitude up to now.

Now his statement is quite direct with all masks lifted. He also gives a reason why these apocalyptic statements are made.

He god applause from Yann LeCun but then contrary reactions from Elon Musk (who is not an ML expert btw) but also from Geoffrey Hinton who said he left Google to be able to talk about it openly.

So our take:

I would trust a statement from Andrew Ng more than anyone else in this discussion. It was btw also shared by all the AI/ML experts we spoke to this year.