UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has warned against rushing to regulate the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence (AI) before fully understanding it. He said AI has the potential to transform life but it should be a global priority to mitigate the risks of human extinction it could bring, similar to pandemics and nuclear war, according to a BBC report. In a speech, the British leader who completed one year in office this week, also announced setting up of world's first AI safety institute in the country.
"Get this wrong, and AI could make it easier to build chemical or biological weapons. Terrorist groups could use AI to spread fear and destruction on an even greater scale. Criminals could exploit AI for cyber-attacks, disinformation, fraud, or even child sexual abuse," warned Mr Sunak.
He even touched upon the "most unlikely and extreme" fears, which could leader to a worst-case scenario - society losing all control over AI, preventing it from being switched off.
Mr Sunak said in the speech on Thursday that mitigating the risk of human extinction from AI should be a "global priority".
But the UK Prime Minister added: "This is not a risk that people need to be losing sleep over right now. I don't want to be alarmist. And there is a real debate about this - some experts think it will never happen at all. But however uncertain and unlikely these risks are, if they did manifest themselves, the consequences would be incredibly serious."
The speech comes a week before Mr Sunak hosts a summit on AI safety. It will focus on risks from cutting-edge systems that can carry out wide range of tasks but pose unknown risks to public safety and security.
Announcing the new AI Safety Institute, Mr Sunak noted: "It will advance the world's knowledge of AI safety and it will carefully examine, evaluate, and test new types of AI, so that we understand what each new model is capable of; exploring all the risks, from social harms like bias and misinformation, through to the most extreme risks of all."
The Prime Minister also announced an investment of almost a billion pounds in a supercomputer "thousands of times faster than the one you have at home".
