AI pioneer blasts extinction fears, accuses tech firms of using made-up safety arguments to stifle competition

Artificial intelligence pioneer Andrew Ng is dismissing fears that AI could wipe out humanity — and accusing some businesses of using “made-up safety arguments” to push regulations aimed at crushing competition.“I think there are no meaningful human existential risks from AI,” Ng told The Economist’s “Inside Tech” podcast in an interview published Tuesday.“So, efforts to stave off human existential risk seem unnecessary.”The blunt remarks came against a backdrop of increasingly dire warnings from AI researchers and industry insiders — some of whom have embraced so-called “doomerism” and predict that super-intelligent machines could go rogue, seize control of critical infrastructure and ultimately bring about human extinction.Ng, a former Stanford prof who helped launch the pioneering Google Brain project and co-founded online education giant Coursera, argued that the apocalyptic rhetoric has distracted policymakers from genuine problems while giving established AI companies an opportunity to hamstring smaller rivals.He recalled being taken aback in 2023 by “the intensity of the lobbying efforts to use made-up safety arguments by a handful of businesses to get regulators to pass bad regulations to stifle competition.”Ng suggested that companies spending billions of dollars developing proprietary AI models have an incentive to restrict competing systems that can be downloaded and used for free.He also blasted attempts to compare artificial intelligence with nuclear weapons, calling the analogy irresponsible.“One blows up cities; the other is intelligence.What’s [one have] to do with each other?” Ng said.He warned that “regulators are distracted fighting phantoms rather than looking at the actual problems of AI.”Ng pointed specifically to AI-generated, non-consensual intimate deepfakes as an abuse that warrants tough legislation and penalties.Rather than restrict a technology with overwhelmingly beneficial applications, Ng argue...