There is no shortage of explanations to explain why the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists shifted its metaphorical “Doomsday Clock” increased by 4 seconds on Tuesday, reaching 85 minutes to midnight. For example, world leaders are talking openly about essay And using nuclear weapons, and the United States takes on the threat of climate change from fossil fuels even less seriously than last year.
But behind all the existential threats we have created for ourselves lies a lack of cooperation, made even worse by the acceleration of artificial intelligence. deep fakes and the erosion of trust in information systems.
“AI is an important and accelerating disruptive technology,” Daniel Holz, chairman of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Council that sets the Doomsday Clock and a physics professor at the University of Chicago, said at the news conference. announcement. “AI also fuels disinformation, making it even more difficult to combat all the other threats we consider. But instead of working towards international standards governing AI safety, we are rushing headlong into an AI arms race, with what could be disastrous consequences.”
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AI and social media are helping journalists and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa called it “information armageddon.” Without reliable information, we lack the “shared reality” needed to address existential threats like climate change and nuclear weapons. Generative AI makes it possible to create disinformation at virtually no cost and in large quantities, as well as increasingly convincing scams.
“Information integrity is the mother of all models, because you cannot run democracy on a corrupt operating system,” Ressa said.
This isn’t the only warning about AI risks in the past week. Pope Leo XIV, in a message ahead of World Communications Day, has raised concerns that people are giving up their ability to think and communicate to AI systems.
“By simulating human voices and faces, wisdom and knowledge, conscience and responsibility, empathy and friendship, systems known as artificial intelligence not only interfere with information ecosystems, but also encroach on the deepest level of communication, that of human relationships,” the pope wrote.
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Similar concerns concern some AI creators. Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of AI developer Anthropic, published a long blog post on the risks and opportunities of increasingly powerful AI systems. He highlighted the risks of AI autonomy, misuse and economic disruption, should the technology put large numbers of people out of work.
“Humanity is on the verge of being entrusted with almost unimaginable power, and it is very difficult to know whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity necessary to exercise it,” Amodei wrote.
Despite the pessimistic nature of Doomsday Clock’s name, experts speaking at the Bulletin’s announcement said the aim was to highlight opportunities to avoid the worst-case scenario. “This is a fundamentally optimistic exercise,” Holz said. “The problem is, there are ways to go back.”
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Because the clock represents human-made threats, people can do something about them, said Alexandra Bell, president and CEO of the Bulletin. Bell encouraged people to seek accurate information on topics such as climate change, nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence, and to push politicians and others with power to make things right.
“Every time we’ve been able to turn back the clock, it’s because scientists and experts were working to find solutions and the public was demanding action,” Bell said.
