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“‘This is unbelievable, it’s going to be fabulous…well, it’s going to be fabulous and dangerous.’”
Count Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio among those who simultaneously see great promise and potential calamity in the rise of artificial intelligence.
In an interview with CNBC, the hedge-fund titan and billionaire investor said the current iteration of generative AI “is an unbelievable technology that will create enormous powers.” But risk surround how people use that technology.
“We’re on this environment where it can either produce a tremendous amount of productivity and raise our living standards and really make things a whole lot better. Or it could be used…in various ways to hurt each other,” Dalio said.
The problem is that the technology won’t be regulated or controlled, which will contribute to a more disorderly environment, he said.
The launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool late last year heightened public awareness of AI’s power. Something of an AI investment frenzy has gripped the stock market this year, with AI-related plays driving big gains for a handful of tech and chip companies in 2023.
Meanwhile, warnings over the technology have also proliferated. And they argue that the stakes are rather high.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the Center for AI Safety warned last month. Signatories to the statement included Geoffrey Hinton, a University of Toronto emeritus professor who has warned against misuse of AI, along with OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman and Google DeepMind Chief Executive Demis Hassabis.
Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
Chief Executive Elon Musk and Apple Inc.
AAPL,
co-founder Steve Wozniak signed a petition from the Future of Life Institute earlier this year calling for a six-month pause in the development of AI.
At a Senate hearing earlier in May, ChatGPT’s Altman acknowledged the sheer power of AI to drive adverse outcomes but said he also saw ways for governments and technologists to work together so that AI becomes a “printing-press moment.”
—Emily Bary contributed to this article.
