Eric Horvitz, Microsoft's chief scientific officer, believes artificial intelligence (AI) will enable future humans to flourish, but he's clearly hedging his bets.
Horvitz published a post on Microsoft's official blog on May 30 titled "Thoughts on artificial intelligence and a prosperous future for humanity." The article discusses the future of artificial intelligence and publishes a series of articles written by AI experts who were early adopt ers of OpenAI. GPT-4 before public release.
According to the blog post, when Horvitz gains such access in 2022, he will be amazed by the capabilities of OpenAI's GPT-4: "I observed unexpected glimmers of intelligence that surpassed those in previous AI systems. Compared to its predecessor, GPT-3 .5 (a model used by tens of millions of people as ChatGPT), I noticed a significant leap forward in functionality.
Specifically, Horvitz touted GPT-4's "ability to interpret my intent and provide complex answers to numerous prompts," which he said "feels like a 'phase transition' that evokes emergent phenomenon I encounter in physics. image of." In testing GPT- 4, Horvitz wrote, "it became increasingly clear that the model and its successors have enormous transformative potential." However, on the same day that Horvitz made the announcement, his name also appeared as a signature on a document published by the Center for AI Safety.
The document consists only of a preamble and a one-sentence statement, signed by a list of signatories representing a veritable who's who of AI experts (with a handful of notable dissenters, including Meta's Yann LeCun and Andrew Ng, co-founders of Google Brain ). "Mitigating the risk of AI extinction should become a global priority alongside other social-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war," the statement read.
Reception of the document was somewhat divided on social media, with many experts detailing why they signed it, while others worried about undefined risks such as future artificial intelligence systems having capabilities that are currently unattainable fragmentation .focus on more important issues. Horvitz did speak in his recent blog post about the "challenges" involved in developing safe AI, acknowledging his "anxiety" about the transformative nature of the technology. But no mention of potential extinction.
Outside of AI, Microsoft is exploring other emerging technologies. The company was recently approved to participate in the central bank digital currency pilot program of the Central Bank of Brazil, along with Santander, Visa and several other applicants.
