AI won’t destroy jobs forever, says Meta scientist

In 2018, Professor LeCun secured the Turing Award alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, acknowledged for their pioneering advancements in AI. The trio subsequently gained renown as ‘the godfathers of AI’.

But Dr Hinton recently quit his role at Google, warning about the dangers from developments in the field. He warned some of the dangers of AI chatbots are “quite scary”. He told the BBC: “"Right now, they're not more intelligent than us, as far as I can tell. But I think they soon may be."

He joins a growing sea of critics who say that companies are racing toward danger with their aggressive campaign to create products based on generative AI.

Recently, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an investigation into AI to ensure the technology develops in ways that ensure open, competitive markets and effective consumer protection.

The government has asked regulators, including the CMA, to think about how the innovative development and deployment of AI can be supported against five overarching principles: safety, security, and robustness; appropriate transparency and explainability; fairness; accountability and governance; and contestability and redress.

However, Prof LeCun disagrees that AI is a risk to the human race.

Computers would become more intelligent than humans but that was many years away and "if you realise it's not safe you just don't build it," he said on the BBC. "Will AI take over the world? No, this is a projection of human nature on machines.” It would be a huge mistake to keep AI research "under lock and key," he said.

Individuals who expressed concerns regarding the potential hazards of AI did so due to their inability to envision methods for ensuring its safety, he contended.

"It's as if you asked in 1930 to someone how are you going to make a turbo-jet safe? Turbo-jets were not invented yet in 1930, same as human level AI has not been invented yet.

"Turbo jets were eventually made incredibly reliable and safe," and the same would happen with AI, he told the BBC.

Meta boasts an expansive AI research initiative, striving to develop intelligent systems that rival human capabilities. Beyond research, the company leverages AI to aid in detecting detrimental content on social media platforms.

Prof LeCun addressed a gathering of invited journalists, discussing his endeavours in the realm of Objective Driven AI. This pursuit seeks to create secure systems capable of memory retention, logical reasoning, strategic planning, and possessing common sense – a set of attributes that are notably absent in popular chatbots like ChatGPT.

He stated that there was "no doubt" about AI eventually surpassing human intelligence. However, he emphasised that researchers were still grappling with fundamental concepts necessary to attain such a milestone, a journey that could span years, if not decades.

And he’s not the only one who wants to promote AI as a force for good. More than 1,300 signatures have been garnered by an open letter urging the UK government and industry to acknowledge AI as 'a transformational force for good' rather than an existential threat to humanity.

The letter was signed by thinkers including Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE (Stemettes CEO), Sir Ken Olisa OBE entrepreneur and philanthropist, and Prof Luciano Floridi (Oxford Internet Institute - University of Oxford), to counter ‘AI doom’.

Rashik Parmar MBE, CEO of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT said: “The technologists and leaders who signed our statement believe AI won’t grow up like The Terminator but instead as a trusted co-pilot in learning, work, healthcare, entertainment.

“One way of achieving that is for AI to be created and managed by licensed and ethical professionals meeting standards that are recognised across international borders.

“The public need confidence that the experts not only know how to create and use AI but how to use it responsibly. Yes, AI is a journey with no return ticket, but this letter shows the tech community doesn’t believe it ends with the nightmare scenario of evil robot overlords.”