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Technology

A third of scientists working on AI say it could cause global disaster

A survey of artificial intelligence researchers found that 36 per cent believe AIs could cause a catastrophe on the scale of nuclear war

By Jeremy Hsu

20 September 2022

An image of a nuclear bomb explosion; Shutterstock ID 250791484; purchase_order: -; job: -; client: -; other: -

Fears that AI could cause a nuclear-level catastrophe were common among researchers who study artificial intelligence

Sahara Prince / Shutterstock

More than one-third of artificial intelligence researchers around the world agree that AI decisions could cause a catastrophe as bad as all-out nuclear war in this century.

The findings come from a survey covering the opinions of 327 researchers who had recently co-authored papers on AI research in natural language processing. In recent years, there have been big advances in this area, with the increased use of large language AI models that display impressive capabilities, including writing computer code and …

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