Obama rips Trump over AI policy amid ‘doomsday’ warnings

Former President Obama on Friday slammed President Trump over his handling of how to approach artificial intelligence (AI) amid “doomsday” warnings coming from some in the tech industry about the technology’s potential existential threat to humanity.

Obama said during an interview at Colgate University in New York that the federal government must regulate AI, before referring to comments made by one Trump adviser.

“I heard one of Donald Trump’s main advisers on this make the argument that, ‘The market will take care of ai,'” the former president said. “These companies will solve the safety issues because they have every incentive to do so — if it turns out to be dangerous, people will just sue them and they’re worried about financial liability.'”

“That’s not how we treat airlines,” Obama added. “Or drug companies, or food companies.”

Obama continued that AI could become a threat at a human level if it falls into the clutches of “bad humans” and if self-improving AI models realize they no longer need humans. He referred to Trump again in that his........

© The Hill