Microsoft President: Let’s keep artificial intelligence under human control

President of Microsoft Corporation Brad Smith said that “real clarity” was needed. On the goals of artificial intelligence, calling for the development of an “organizational scheme” that requires work in the private sector, at the national and global levels.

“People want to make sure that this new technology, artificial intelligence, will remain under human control,” he added. “They’ve seen a lot of sci-fi movies where it didn’t quite go well. While we’re creating something that feels like a piece of sci-fi, we need companies and regulators to focus on that,” Smith said at the B20 India Summit 2023.

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence have raised global concern about the technology’s potential to spread misinformation, misuse, and disrupt the labor market. But Smith said those concerns are not shared by the developers, whose optimism reminded him of the early years of social networking platforms. At that time, the tech industry was just emerging “The ‘euphoria’ about all the good things social media would bring to the world — and there was a lot of it — without also considering the risks.” He said.

The hype surrounding the technology has sparked an AI arms race between tech giants such as Google and Microsoft, the latter a longtime partner in OpenAI. But the rapid pace of development has alarmed lawmakers and industry leaders, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who was one of more than 27,000 people to sign an open letter in March calling on IQ labs to halt development.

With information from AFP and CNBC