The AI pandemic is like Covid's arrival – countries must take immediate steps – AI father Yoshua

Yoshua Bengio, considered one of the 'godfathers of AI', states that due to security concerns related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), the world is currently approaching a critical juncture where governments must act swiftly, similar to how they responded during the COVID-19 pandemic. He urges people to consider how quickly governments acted at the beginning of the pandemic once they realized public safety and democracy were at risk, and further states that he expects similar swift actions to be taken regarding AI technology.

He believes that recent various incidents related to AI, especially hacking activities and warnings from whistleblowers, have made government intervention even more essential. Meanwhile, 42 foreign members of the Royal Society in Britain have sent an open letter to its president, Sir Paul Nurse, expressing their deep concern about the rapid development of AI technology. Additionally, a researcher at the AI institute Anthropic resigned from their position, warning that AI could destroy humanity before the end of the next decade, a clear illustration of the seriousness of this risk.

In light of this situation, the request by Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, to slow down the pace of AI technology development has received support from leading companies and individuals such as OpenAI, Google, and Elon Musk. However, some critics accuse this request to slow down as a regulatory capture strategy by large companies, implemented through governments, to increase costs for smaller competitors. Bengio strongly refutes this accusation, pointing out that regulations also have a significant financial impact on major companies. On the other hand, US President Donald Trump has rejected the proposal to slow down this technological growth, as he does not want to fall behind China in the AI technology race.

Meanwhile, the Canadian and German governments have announced financial allocations of up to CAD 300 million to Bengio's non-profit organization for the creation of an "honest AI" as a safety mechanism to control dangerous AI systems that operate without human intervention. Through their developing new technical system called "LawZero", it is expected to act as a safeguard against misleading or self-preserving AI agents.