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AI researchers claim we’re on track to create ‘new species’ of superintelligent machines in Post video debate

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Artificial Intelligence researchers think we may create a “new species” of superintelligent machines, but caution against the US allowing China to gain an upper hand.

Two longtime researchers — one widely considered an AI “optimist” and the other an AI “doomer” — agreed to debate, mediated by The Post, where they discussed not trusting the China, how to avoid disaster and how “self-regulation is a joke.”

“I was wrong,” University of Washington professor and AI entrepreneur Oren Etzioni, told The Post. “I still retain some optimism. But I now see the things I thought were many, many years away [are] coming soon, at a pace that we may not be able to anticipate.”

Tegmark, founder of the Future of Life Institute, is surprised authorities haven’t stepped in, adding: “I never imagined that the people in America with the most power would let companies get so close to things that one could lose control over without intervening.

“Companies are just openly saying, well, we’re going to build super intelligence. [It] might be a new species.”

His concern is when we reach “recursive self-improvement,” or the point at which AI can start improving itself and reproducing: “The turning point is… when it becomes better than humans at AI research.”

However, both agreed the simplest way of keeping AI from going over the edge is by keeping it siloed, with different machines taking on different tasks.

Etzioni has long been an advocate of AI models with specific, narrow, domain intelligence, rather all-encompassing super-agents.

“I think what we need to do… is to design systems carefully and smartly so that we box them in,” he said.

Tegmark agreed: “By default, machines........

© New York Post