We always had three boundaries if you want AI [safety] we said
don’t put them on the open internet until you solve the control problem
don’t teach them to code because that makes themselves develop and
don’t have other AIS prompting them other agents working with them
and we’ve crossed all three lines.
Rishi Sunk was in the U.S to top British leadership on artificial intelligence just days after one of his top advisors warned that AI could begin to kill humans within two years it follows an open letter signed by Elon Musk and hundreds of the biggest names in Tech calling for an urgent pause in the development of AI well Mo gaudat who’s a former Chief business officer at Google X was among the first to raise the alarm he says the situation is beyond emergency a mo author of scary smart which is a scary smart book by the way joins me now Mo great to see you thank you so much you were part of this uh quite secretive Google X Group which I presume you would your job to think the unthinkable about stuff like Ai and you very quickly were out of the traps to warn people look this is serious very what was it that you saw where you thought okay we’ve got to be really careful now we had a tiny bit of an experiment that was about teaching robotic arms to grip items that were some funny developer used children toys in front of those arms and and basically they kept trying for weeks without any success whatsoever and I passed by them and I was thinking we wasted so much money on something that wasn’t going to work on a Friday evening one of them gripped one yellow ball showed it to the camera and basically I was like there you go millions of dollars for one yellow ball Monday morning every one of them was was gripping one year every yellow Ball by a few weeks later every one of them was gripping everything the speed that at which those machines were learning is staggering but at the same time uh the the understanding we have about why they learn why they do what they do is very very limited is that self-designing what they were doing they basically are mimicking human intelligence and the reason I asked that is I interviewed Professor Stephen Hawking just before he died his last television interview and I asked him what is the biggest threat to Mankind and he said well actually let me show you the clip we’ve got to hear of it ever since the start of the Industrial Revolution there have been fears of mass unemployment as machines replaced humans instead a demand for goods and services has risen in line with the increased capabilities whether this can continue indefinitely it’s an open question but there is a greater Danger from artificial intelligence if we allow it to become self-designing for then it can improve itself rapidly when we may lose control it seems very prescient now that was a few years ago yeah I mean that was President this is really what you’re talking about I I left in 2018 a warning in my first video that I issued after after I left was all about that and the idea that you know we always had three uh boundaries if you want for AI we said don’t put them on the open internet until you solve the control problem don’t teach them to code because that makes themselves develop and don’t have other AIS prompting them other agents working with them and we’ve crossed all three lines I mean I remember with chat I’m a big chess player fan not great but I like playing it and I remember when deep blue I think that’s the first you won against Gary Casper right that was it and to start with the grand Masters beat the first ones and then suddenly deep blue won and then it got completely Invincible no no again never again did the human win well no human can beat it even the greatest players like Casper so that showed me how quickly robots technology computers can LeapFrog past human brains let’s stick with gaming alphago was designed by deepmind actually here in the UK amazing amazing team to to win in the game strategy game of go right uh it took them months and months and months and a couple of versions to win and be the world champion if you want then they had alphago Master learn the the game without ever watching a human player play they the alphago master learned by playing against itself within three days it won against the first version within 21 days it won a thousand to zero against the world champion which was already an AI do you understand that the speed at which they are learning so look that taught me through timings here because people have been calling experts in this letter calling for a six-month pause but if if nothing is paused if we carry on at the rate that we’re going at the moment what could happen the reality in my personal view is that it is very difficult to predict something could happen tomorrow or in four years or in five years I wouldn’t say later than 2029 most of our predictions and when you when you say something what do you mean what is the worst case scenario beginning of the worst case scenario is that they are smarter than us so they are not controllable right and the thing that what would they do then what would artificial intelligence do once it becomes smarter than human beings would it see would it see us human entities as pointless there are two stages of threat right and I think the biggest challenge we have in the world today is we’re focused on the existential threat that we saw in science fiction movies The Closer threat is much worse right this is an Oppenheimer moment the one that controls AI has enormous power over everyone else right and basically that means that everyone who doesn’t control AI today is in an arms race trying to take control of the this is why when I think of the prime minister’s move it’s a great move overdue almost when you think about it but so difficult to achieve because you have to unify China Russia and the U.S right to make to be able to to regulate I mean a well-intentioned person trying to regulate and control AI we give it morality that’s the whole point but but a nefarious controller of AI presumably could teach it to be immoral the opposite which is happening as we speak there’s absolutely no doubt if you tell the drug lords of the world and the criminals of the world that AI is a super powerful tool they’re finding the way a way to hack your bank as well it’s scary it is very very concerning and I think the reality is interestingly the only way you can defend against the super intelligence is through another Super intelligence which is what creates that prisoner’s dilemma what I call the first inevitable inevitable and scary smart is that is that we have to continue the development because if uh you know it falls in the wrong hands we want the right hands to have power to the Defenders right at the same time that complexity of the situation is entirely about morality and ethics and and interestingly the latest development of something like Chad GPT for example is using reinforcement learning which is a very interesting technique because it basically allows a human to interface with chat GPT and say that was the wrong answer can you go back and think about what it is the challenge is almost like you’re teaching a child to school a hundred percent and you you know in reinforcement learning I mean in a simplified way we’re basically telling the machine to revisit its algorithm so that the answer becomes a cat not a bird right also we can tell it that answer is immoral can you revisit your algorithm so that you become again the problem I see is that you if you’re well intentioned doing this process yes that’s one thing if you’re teaching it deliberately to be immoral yes very quickly you could get out of control AI which has very unpleasant tendencies my very clear statement is that I honestly am not concerned with the machines even though the existential threats are possible you’re concerned with what humans teach I’m concerned with humans with AI and they’re not I totally agree with you yeah let’s end on a happier note it actually starts on a desperately unhappy note but you have this awful thing in your life where your son but in for a routine operation and ended up dying through a series of Errors made by the medical team and out of it you could have fallen apart like a lot of people may have done in that situation but you turned it into a huge extraordinary positive tell me what you did I I don’t know honestly I felt in a very interesting way that my son should not have left the world for no reason that I could never bring him back it was it was four hours Pierce between between the moment he hugged me and went into that operating room to the minute he left our world all together four hours and you have to get to a point where you say what do I do with this what do I fall apart and then on my desk bed is still not here or do I try to do something that reminds the world of his Essence and and believe it or not everything I’ve done since since 2014 has been influenced by by what that young man taught me and in a very interesting way this might work on AI and artificial intelligence my work on happiness my work on stress so tell me about the work on happiness specifically I I found a happiness equation basically but you know when you deal with Engineers who are weird people so so when I was very unhappy as a young man I couldn’t actually find my happiness through the teachings of you know sages and gurus and so on and I had to give myself a practical mathematical way of looking at it I took that I discussed it with my son he taught me the hard side of it and then I I Pro you know I wrote my first book salt for happy which basically was based on that based on an idea that happiness is very logical that if you can control your brain to have a interesting conversation with you I can also control my brain to become a little happier right maybe not to become absolutely happy but to become a little happier right and and that got a lot of acceptance all for happy was an international bestseller everywhere and and basically because the modern world as we know it is here it’s no longer here and so you know my first mission was 10 million happy which was an attempt to make the world remember Ali if you want and then my second mission one billion happy was 100 of because of AI amazing yeah and ultimately actually it comes back again to the human brain 100 and the key denominator here whether it’s dealing with AI whether it’s dealing with your ability to feel happiness actually in the end it’s about the human brain it’s about being human yes brain and heart intuition and Analysis it’s about being human no it’s fantastic to talk to you thank you very much for coming in scary smart the future of AI and how you can save our world well it couldn’t be a more important book at a more important time thank you very much for coming in