Warren Buffett views AI as akin to nuclear weapons with a startling caution.
During a shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, the 93-year-old co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway expressed concerns about the technology giant known as AI.
"We let a genie out of the bottle when we developed nuclear weapons," he warned the gathering. "AI is somewhat similar — it's part way out of the bottle."
Although the legendary investor admitted his limited understanding of AI technology, he voiced fears about its potential hazards. Recently, his image and voice had been replicated with the help of an AI-powered tool, and this was convincing enough to fool even his own family members. Deceptive practices using these 'deep fakes' are expected to go up in the future.
"If I was interested in investing in scamming, it's going to be the growth industry of all time," Buffett joked with the audience.
Berkshire Hathaway, under the leadership of expected successor Greg Abel, has employed some AI in their non-insurance operations. However, details of how the company plans to use AI were not disclosed.
Buffett also acknowledged the positive impacts of AI, but remained doubtful. "It has enormous potential for good and enormous potential for harm," he stated, not knowing how the implications would turn out.
Many individuals and organizations, from economists to tech experts, agree on how significantly AI has impacted workplaces worldwide. 40% of global employment is at risk of disruption by AI, according to the International Monetary Fund. Industries from education to finance to music have experienced its effects.
Since AI's arrival, shares of companies involved in this boom have skyrocketed. Nvidia, a chipmaker, soared about 215% in the past year, and Microsoft rose up to 34%. Berkshire Hathaway rose by an impressive 22% in the same period.
It's not just Buffett voicing concerns about AI. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon expressed uncertainty about AI’s influences in the business, economic and social arenas. However, he acknowledged that AI's effects might become as transformative as some significant technological inferences of the past: "Think the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, computing and the Internet, among others,” Dimon wrote in JPMorgan Chase's annual shareholder letter.
Despite such impressive transformations, Dimon also highlighted the risks posed by AI. "You may already be aware that there are bad actors trying to infiltrate companies’ systems to steal money and intellectual property or simply to cause disruption and damage," were his words of caution.
In January, JPMorgan Chase disclosed a drastic increase in daily hacking attempts on their systems from the previous year, reflecting the escalating cybersecurity challenges for the banking sector.
JPMorgan Chase, seen as the world’s largest bank by market capitalization, is also trying to harness the power of AI throughout its operations.
Naturally, not all predictions are doom and gloom. Forty-two percent of the CEOs surveyed at the Yale CEO Summit believed that AI had the potential to end humanity within the next five to ten years. The Yale professor who conducted the research, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, expressed serious concerns: "It's pretty dark and alarming."
Top AI leaders, academics, and even celebrities have expressed concerns about the potential extinction risk that AI poses.
A statement co-signed by OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman, Geoffrey Hinton (named the 'godfather of AI'), and prominent executives from Google and Microsoft read, "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
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Despite Buffett's concerns about AI's potential hazards and its role in deceptive practices, Berkshire Hathaway, under Greg Abel's leadership, has started investing in AI for their non-insurance operations, albeit the details remain undisclosed.
Given Buffett's and other business leaders' apprehensions about AI, it's crucial for companies to develop robust strategies to mitigate its potential risks while harnessing its benefits for business growth.
Source: edition.cnn.com
