Elon Musk fears are overblown according to Google AI chief

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

WHO IS JOHN GIANNANDREA?

Mr Giannandrea was born in Scotland.

During the 1990s he worked at General Magic, one of the pioneering companies of handheld devices.

Mr Giannandrea even worked on an early personal assistant similar to today’s Siri.

The 53-year-old then joined Netscape and later co-founded voice-recognition firm TellMe.

In 2005, he created Metaweb, software that catalogued links between words and objects which Google bought in 2010.

While at Google, Mr Giannandrea has helped introduce and develop image recognition for Google Photos and smart reply for Google Inbox. 

He was also a leading figure in Alphabet’s self-driving cars scheme using machine learning to navigate streets and obstacles. 

He is now senior vice president for search, machine intelligence and the web.

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.

Picture of a robot thinking, something that billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk has warned about

Elon Musk (pictured), 46, has warned of the dangers of Artificial Intelligence

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’

MUSK: AI IS A FUNDAMENTAL RISK 

During a question-and-answer session at the summer conference of the National Governors Association in Rhode Island., Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned that regulation of artificial intelligence is needed because it’s a ‘fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation.’

The billionaire said regulations will stop humanity from being outsmarted by computers, or ‘deep intelligence in the network’, that can start wars by manipulating information.

Governments must have a better understanding of artificial intelligence technology’s rapid evolution in order to fully comprehend the risks, he said.

‘Once there is awareness, people will be extremely afraid, as they should be…By the time we are reactive in AI regulation, it’ll be too late,’ he added. 

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.’

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