What is the view of Frenchman Arthur Mensch, the co-founder of Mistral AI, on the warnings about the extreme risks of artificial intelligence that have been issued by leaders of major American tech firms such as Sam Altman and Dario Amodei? At the AI summit in India, held from February 16 to February 20, OpenAI CEO Altman raised the idea of creating a kind of “[International Atomic Energy Agency] for international coordination of AI,” in response to the emergence of “true superintelligence,” which he said could appear within “a couple of years.” Meanwhile, Anthropic founder Amodei published a lengthy essay at the end of January, “The Adolescence of Technology,” in which he outlined the risks of advanced AI systems or their use to create biological weapons.
“These are mostly distraction tactics,” responded Mensch, who was interviewed on Friday, February 20, by Le Monde and by the radio station France Inter at the New Delhi AI summit. “In reality, the real risk of artificial intelligence in the near future is [that] of massive influence on how people think and how they vote,” he argued, taking a position contrary to his American counterparts. The head of the French AI start-up had already raised concerns about the risk of an “information oligopoly” forming with AI assistants such as ChatGPT (OpenAI) or Grok (xAI). He described them as potential “thought control instruments” and expressed fears about manipulation attempts during elections.
“It just so happens that the tools capable of exerting this influence are in the hands of the very people who are talking about extreme risks,” the entrepreneur continued. He downplayed the dangers often labeled “existential” or “catastrophic,” which refer to scenarios in which advanced AI could wipe out humanity. “Those extreme risks are still science fiction,” he said. “So these speeches are largely diversions, very deliberately crafted.”
Thanks for doing your best to highlight the important part in bold, but I still can’t get over how misleading the headline is.
CEO of Mistral AI says warnings about extreme risks of artificial intelligence [presented by other AI companies] are often ‘distraction tactics’
I think makes more sense.
My beef with the title is that it scans like he’s trying to downplay the risk of AI altogether. CEO of Mistral AI says the “real risk of artificial intelligence is that of massive influence” is more aligned with the message he seems to have been actually trying to convey.
The risk of intelligence coming from LLMs is zero, let alone superintelligence.
The danger isn’t some computer mind deciding to destroy us upon its birth. It’s the everyday harm CEOs are doing to the working class and future students by using AI as an excuse to cut jobs and force paid products into education and the hands of young workers at the expense of their own skill development.
deleted by creator
No. What is actually happening is that tech companies try to hype up their mathy maths autocomplete by saying it will totally be a skynet situation soon. Because the tech is soooo good bro! Trust me bro! One more trillion and it’s conscious bro.
And the guy from Mistral is calling it out as the dumb bullshit it is, the dangers are much more mundane but immediate.
If the perceived threat is a model going rogue, nobody pays attention to the model operating as intended.
I don’t think he’s wrong in the sense that in the short term the influencing of elections is a much more likely problem.
TL:DR huh? Definitely an NPC.
SEARCH-ENGINE ALGORITHMS AND FACEBOOK ALGORITHMS ENFORCE SOCIETAL BUTCHERY ( apparently Facebook boosted the genociding in southeast Asia, pushing polarization until the tippingpoint was crossed: obviously genocidal-regimes ARE profitable, right?
Isn’t it better to profit from ICE than to stand against it, in Big Tech’s eyes?
Isn’t it more-profitable to take money from Russian troll-farms than to stop them?
( they wouldn’t work, if they were systematically-deplatformed, would they? That ITSELF is evidence of laggardly, and profitable, “control” of such forces )
Isn’t it better to profit from platforming the “dirty dozen” climate-disinformation pushers than to stop them??
HOW THE HELL COULD ACTIVE ALGORITHMS WITH AGENCY POSSIBLY BE “SAFE” WHEN DEVISED BY NARCISSISTIC-MACHIAVELLIAN-SOCIOPATHIC INCORPORATED “PERSONS” FOR THEIR COMBINED PROFIT & EXCLUSIVE-CONTROL ON OUR WORLD??
GASLIGHTING!
Given the actual-balance between DarkTriad owning authority vs objectivity & correct-reasoning & evidence-loyal-worldview-adapting,
implacable/inevitable/unstoppable is the absolute-destruction of civilrights from NEARLY ALL of the world, through the next 7-ish years, in the Regional-Consolidation stage of The Great Filter,
aka humankind’s unconscious-ignorance’s deathmatch against humankind’s adapting.
& once this-next-stage’s finished, I’d be surprised if ANY of such gaslighters were left alive among any surviving woke countries,
AND I’d be surprised if there is even-1 country left in Asia or Africa or East Europe ( possibly South America ) that has ANY civilrights left,
& the US will either have successfully destroyed all civilization throughout the Americas ( continental-scale “mass shooting”, to PROVE that nothing after Trump & his-successor can be “great”, same as mass-shooters do, but at planetside-scale ), XOR somebody in the Americas will somehow have held-out without breaking, right to the end of that stage…
( but if that happens, what will their “victory” look like for them?
Rubble & oceans-of-casualties? )
FINALLY I have accepted as both accurate & precise the Christian Book of Rev 13 prediction that the whole world would be under the sway of the fascist totalitarians.
( removing all the religious-guck from it…
“and a mouth like the mouth of a lion. To it the dragon gave its power, its throne and great authority. 3 One of the heads of the beast appeared to have received a fatal wound, but its fatal wound was healed, and the whole earth followed after the beast in amazement. 4 They worshipped the dragon, because he had given his authority to the beast; and they worshipped the beast,”
identifies a situation in-which the whole-world’s following one single political-ideology, & a majority of the world’s being lead by 1 who speaks “like a lion”, which only is Trump, from our context, the “fatal wound” being the stroke he recently had ( droop-mouth was visible to all ), & the dementia which their drugging is jamming in a monthly-cycle, the miracle-cure could be simply that all the humaneness gets blown from his brain in a stroke, leaving absolutely-effective DarkTetrad in its place, & then al the rest of that is dominoes-going-down: inevitability.
The match is too accurate, too precise, to be deeming it to be “mere coincidence”, now, for Empiricists.
Obviously, Scientism’s ideologues who reject that universe would ever violate the great power Status Quo, reject that as delusion, but the escalations will continue, until this-species is either extinguished in its EARNED DarwinAward, in the 2080’s or so, XOR has successfully grown-up, though only a tiny remnant will survive, if that happens. )
The evidence is no-longer-deniable.
Trump’s rebuffing by the Supreme Court means he can ONLY have his way through totalitarian-dictatorship, & that pushes the invocation of the Insurrection Act.
Expect that shortly.
It’s dominoes-going-down, all the way, from there.
( no, they ones responsible for doing-so won’t move to impeach him until it’s too-late: inertia’s IMPORTANT, you know! ) :
This was all preventable!
Our refusal to prevent it, means we actually do deserve every last drop of it.
Karmic education can be hell.
Our continuums/souls won’t make this retarded mistake ever again I hope, on other worlds, which our continuums/souls will end-up-in, if we fail to grow-up this-time-around, in this world.
The churning of continuums is perpetual, forever.
Grow-up, XOR … grow-up next-time!
Forever.
_ /\ _
PS: I should have made explicit why East Europe would be munged:
The instant Trump annexes Canada, Panama, Venezuela, the Carribean, etc, using Greenland to enforce his cutting-off of ALL trade to Canada ( severing our EU-lifeline ), THEN Putin, financed by China, will be rampaging on Europe, to his heart’s content.
China HAS to break the West, in order to become the only world-ruler next-decade, & with Trump & Putin waging mutual-destruction wars against the woke countries ( this edit-box’s habit of relocating-characters IS FUCKING ANNOYING … I don’t know if it is some javascript lib used by Lemmy, XOR if it’s some such lib only when in firefox on this-platform?? I typed country, NOT cuntroy, software! )
I expect Musk, or Thiel, to replace Trump, in 3-4y, on this-side, don’t know if Putin’ll be the only one that Europe faces.
Europe won’t have any backing from the Americas: they’re getting butchered-down, fersure.
All throughout the Americas who stand against Trump, then his-susccessor, are getting butchered-down, too.
It’s possible that 1% of humankind will survive The Great Filter, this century.
IF that’s earned…
I have to agree with you and with the Mistral guy.
Regarding the Mistral guy:
He speaks about AI but means LLMs, because that’s what he’s developing and that’s what’s hot right now.
A super intelligence that will wipe out humanity is indeed science fiction at this point. And one of the most effective evil way of using them right now is for political influence. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjQNDCYL5Rg
Regarding your points:
I totally agree that profit is definitely more important than social stability and safety for most of big tech.
Also, whatever the AI as a tool is capable of, it will definitely be used for ruthless profit and power gains by powerful people.
So while I see the current AI situation as very problematic, I don’t think it will turn into a Terminator scenario anytime soon. However, if AI gets close to this point, the powerful people, including the Big Tech CEOs will most likely prioritize profits and power over safety again and make it a reality.
