Google’s AI chief has spoken out about what he feels are misconceptions and overstated dangers surrounding intelligent machines.
John Giannandrea took particular aim at ‘unreasonable concerns’ over the arrival of general artificial intelligence, or robots that can think like humans.
Although he failed to name tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has been particular vocal over his fears about the technology, many have inferred this connection.
Google’s AI chief has spoken out about what he feels are misconceptions and overstated dangers surrounding intelligent machines. John Giannandrea took particular aim at ‘unreasonable concerns’ over the arrival of robots that can think like humans
Mr Giannandrea made the comments during an in-depth talk at Tech Crunch’s Disrupt SF conference, currently being held in San Francisco.
He told moderator Frederic Lardinois: ‘I think there’s a huge amount of hype around AI right now.
‘There’s a lot of people that are unreasonably concerned around the rise of general AI.
‘Machine learning and artificial intelligence are extremely important and will revolutionise our industry.
‘What we’re doing is building tools like the Google search engine and making you more productive.
‘I’m definitely not worried about the AI apocalypse.
‘I just object to the hype and soundbites that some people are making.’
Mr Giannandrea has previously compared AI’s development to the level of a four-year-old child.
During the Disrupt SF event, he stated that it has not yet even reached that level.
Despite his apparent lack of concern, and using only the euphemistic ‘some people’, Mr Giannandrea’s comments are likely to go down badly with Musk.
Elon Musk (pictured right) has previously posted ominous messages about the dangers of AI (left), most recently in response to Vladimir Putin’s claims that whoever cracks AI will ‘rule the world’
In response to Vladimir Putin’s claims that whoever cracks AI will ‘rule the world’, the Tesla founder has in recent weeks said that he thinks the technology will be the most likely cause of World War 3.
Musk took to Twitter on September 4 to make the chilling warning, claiming that ‘competition for AI superiority at national level’ could spark a war.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder suggests that a war is likely to be started by one of the AIs itself, rather than a country leader.
Putin, speaking on September 1, told a meeting of students that the development of AI raises ‘colossal opportunities and threats that are difficult to predict now.’
Musk tweeted a link to The Verge’s story about Putin’s claims, along with the caption: ‘It begins…’
He then followed this up with a tweet saying: ‘China, Russia, soon all countries with strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 in my opinion.’