AI poses ‘risk of extinction’ and should be a 'global priority', tech leaders say

Axios Technology Reporter Ashley Gold discusses a new warning from leaders in the AI sector who are calling for a global framework for AI regulation. They say there is a risk of "extinction" if the technology isn't regulated.

Video transcript

BRAD SMITH: AI seems to be the talk of everywhere right now, and companies are eager to get in on the hype. More than 100 earnings calls this quarter mentioned the technology.

Leaders in the field are cashing in big time. Shares of NVIDIA, C3 AI, PALANTIR, they're all gaining more than 100% each so far over the course of this year. But the boom in interest and investment has industry veterans sounding alarms.

More than 300 scientists and tech leaders issued a stark warning yesterday. AI poses risk of extinction, and addressing it should be a priority globally. Signatories included executives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Google DeepMind.

Ashley Gold, technology reporter at Axios joins us now to dive deeper into the push for AI regulation. Ashley, great to speak with you here this morning. All right, so you've been continuing to cover this AI space, as well as the reaction from a couple of key executives and what they're pushing back on. What are they all in concert about right now?

ASHLEY GOLD: Executives are in concert that there needs to be sort of this global scale of regulation for AI. They want to see regulations both on the US federal level and for sort of globally across the whole world there to be some sort of agreement on at least, basic principles, you know, guardrails or a framework for what the rules should be for these high risk AI systems, which is how you would think of generative AI, ChatGPT, what we've seen explode in the past six months.

JULIE HYMAN: I mean, it's really hard to wrap our heads around a warning from these leaders that says, we need to prepare for this like we would prepare for the pandemic. At the same time, that they're also developing these technologies.

ASHLEY GOLD: Exactly.

JULIE HYMAN: So it's all very conceptual. Is there anyone who actually has a plan for how to prepare?

ASHLEY GOLD: Honestly, I agree with you that it's totally conceptual. It's very hard for the average person to sort of read a warning like that and think, OK, I have a good idea of what the risks are. I better be paying attention to this. It's too pie in the sky. I think these AI leaders would do better in sort of describing how the advances of generative AI and other types of advanced AI would impact our everyday lives with problems we already see in society-- inequality, misinformation, sort of the inequality we're seeing across the board with late stage capitalism.

I think what would make more sense is if we just talked about how AI will sort of impact our current problems, our current online environment instead of alluding towards this future where AI is everywhere, because people really can't wrap their heads around that.

BRAD SMITH: How much of this is positioning from these execs, knowing that for regulators in Washington who have already had to try and get past the learning curve, and everything from the metaverse to social media for some of them, and even into blockchain technology, so forth that they're not necessarily going to understand the ins and outs of how to even wrap their minds around artificial intelligence, how that regulation should move forward, and how, where there could be productivity improvements--

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BRAD SMITH: --bless you, where we could still see some type of framework that companies and society could operate within.

ASHLEY GOLD: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these AI leaders, they see what happened when social media really exploded. And it came to be that we had no real rules of the road for social media, and no federal privacy law, no laws around how companies can handle your information. And there's been a lot of backlash, and social media companies have gotten in a lot of trouble and done a lot of congressional hearings as a result.

These AI leaders are saying, this is inevitable. We're going to get out ahead of any problems now. We're going to set the rules of the road so you can't get mad at us later and say that we broke the rules or we're doing things that are illegal or are too much. We want to work with you now to figure out exactly how we can go forward with this, so you sort of accept that AI is happening and we could all go for it together and sort of an opposite way of how we've dealt with social media, which is looking at it after the fact and saying we should have had some rules in place. Here are some lessons we learned. They're very much trying to avoid that.

JULIE HYMAN: They're trying. I don't know how optimistic we are. I mean, the EU has already acted on this, right? There are some lawmakers out there who have proposed things. I think Michael Bennet, the Colorado senator, has some ideas here. Tell us about that, and whether it's actually gaining any traction.

ASHLEY GOLD: So Michael Bennet has proposed making an agency to regulate social media and specifically, artificial intelligence. He thinks that the current agencies where this would fall under their jurisdiction. The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, that they don't have the resources or the very specific expertise needed to regulate AI.

So it's a lofty idea. I think getting new agencies propped up is difficult, especially in this political environment. You've seen how Republicans talk about the CFPB and other agencies like that were sort of propped up in the past 20 years or so. A new agency costs money. A new agency is further government intervention in private markets.

So as much as Republicans and Democrats agree on the need to regulate AI, and they really do agree, there's going to be some disagreement over how much money can be spent to really do research and invest here and just how much the government should be involved. So I think it'll be very difficult.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, well, we'll see. Cross fingers, I guess. Ashley Gold, technology reporter at Axios. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

ASHLEY GOLD: Thank you.