Medical experts have issued a fresh call to halt the development of artificial intelligence (AI), warning it poses an ‘existential threat’ to people.

A team of five doctors and global health policy experts from across four continents said there were three ways in which the tech could wipe out humans.

First is the risk that AI will help amplify authoritarian tactics like surveillance and disinformation. ‘The ability of AI to rapidly clean, organise and analyse massive data sets consisting of personal data, including images collected by the increasingly ubiquitous presence of cameras,’ they say, could make it easier for authoritarian or totalitarian regimes to come to power and stay in power.

Second, the group warns that AI can accelerate mass murder via the expanded use of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS). 

And, lastly, the health experts expressed worry over the potential for severe economic devastation and human misery, as untold millions lose their livelihoods to those hard-working bots. ‘Projections of the speed and scale of job losses due to AI-driven automation,’ according to the authors, ‘range from tens to hundreds of millions over the coming decade.’

There commentary comes only weeks after over a thousand scientists, including John Hopfield from Princeton and Rachel Branson from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, signed a letter calling for a halt to AI research over similar concerns. 

Read more