Artificial intelligence threatens extinction, experts say in new warning

Scientists and tech industry leaders have issued a new warning about the perils that artificial intelligence poses to humankind. The statement posted online Tuesday says that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war." Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist known as the godfather of artificial intelligence, are among the hundreds of leading figures who signed the statement. Worries about artificial intelligence systems outsmarting humans and running wild have intensified with the rise of a new generation of highly capable AI chatbots such as ChatGPT.