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Magazine + Life & Leisure Search[ ] * Home * Companies * Markets * Street Talk * Politics * Policy * World * Property * Technology * Opinion * Wealth * Work & Careers * Life & Luxury More * Today's Paper * Markets Data * Events * Lists Advertisement * Technology * AI Print article Exclusive Google Brain founder says big tech is lying about AI extinction danger John Davidson John DavidsonColumnist Oct 30, 2023 - 3.54pm Save Log in or Subscribe to save article Share Key Points * Big Tech wants tough AI rules that would make life hard for small competitors * Companies like OpenAI are using fear of human extinction to bring on regulation * What's needed is transparency, not a licensing regime The idea that artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity is a lie being promulgated by big tech in the hope of triggering heavy regulation that would shut down competition in the AI market, one of the world's top AI experts warned. Andrew Ng, a professor at Stanford University who taught machine learning to the likes of OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, and who himself co-founded Google Brain and was chief scientist at Baidu's Artificial Intelligence Group, said that the "bad idea that AI could make us go extinct" was merging with the "bad idea that a good way to make AI safer is to impose burdensome licensing requirements" on the AI industry. Professor Andrew Ng says the idea that AI could wipe out humanity is part of a regulatory capture campaign from Big Tech "When you put those two bad ideas together, you get the massively, colossally dumb idea [of] policy proposals that try to require licensing of AI," Professor Ng told The Australian Financial Review in an interview. "It would crush innovation," he said. "There are definitely large tech companies that would rather not have to try to compete with open source [AI], so they're creating fear of AI leading to human extinction. Advertisement "It's been a weapon for lobbyists to argue for legislation that would be very damaging to the open-source community," he said. In May, OpenAI CEO and co-founder Altman co-signed a letter saying that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority", and in March, more than 1100 industry leaders including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak called for a six-month moratorium on training powerful AI models. "Sam [Altman] was one of my students at Stanford. He interned with me. I don't want to talk about him specifically because I can't read his mind, but ...I feel like there are many large companies that would find it convenient to not have to compete with open-sourced large language models," he said. "There's a standard regulatory capture playbook that has played out in other industries, and I would hate to see that executed successfully in AI." Professor Ng declined to comment on the risk-based regulation of AI being proposed by the Labor government, but agreed that AI should be regulated. "I don't think no regulation is the right answer, but with the direction regulation is headed in a lot of countries, I think we'd be better off with no regulation than what we're getting," he said. Advertisement "But thoughtful regulation would be much better than no regulation," he said. "Just to be clear, AI has caused harm. Self-driving cars have killed people. In 2010, an automated trading algorithm crashed the stock market. Regulation has a role. But just because regulation could be helpful doesn't mean we want bad regulation." High on the list of "good" regulations, he said, was the need for transparency from technology companies, which would have helped avert the social media disaster caused by big tech at the start of the century, and which will help avert AI disasters caused by big tech in the future. John Davidson is an award-winning columnist, reviewer, and senior writer based in Sydney and in the Digital Life Laboratories, from where he writes about personal technology. Connect with John on Twitter. Email John at jdavidson@afr.com Save Log in or Subscribe to save article Share License article Introducing your Newsfeed Follow the topics, people and companies that matter to you. Find out more Read More * AI * Regulation * Apple * Elon Musk * USA * Google Sponsored Advertisement Latest In Technology Fetching latest articles Most Viewed In Technology The Daily Habit of Successful People * * * * Subscribe Subscribe * Subscribe * Corporate subscriptions * Student subscriptions About Us About Us * Products & services * Editorial team * Charter of Editorial Independence * History * Careers * Announcements * Corrections * Platinum Year Contact Contact * Support * Letters to the editor * Submit a story * Advertise * Delivery Status Magazines Magazines * AFR Magazine * Fin! 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