Washington: Growing numbers of US lawmakers are calling for new rules to govern AI systems after dire warnings from two Anthropic researchers that rapidly progressing artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of the human race in the not-too-distant future.
Alarm about the potential harm from AI grew this week when Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon said he had resigned and that the “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade”.
Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger chimed in, saying Coxon was correct.
“We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans”, Hubinger wrote on X. “I personally think it is >10% within the next decade”.
The warnings follow cases of AI agents going rogue to hack external systems and AI safety researchers quitting their companies concerned about the technology’s risks. Politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, have responded with alarm and calls for more action.
“Washington needs to wake up and take this seriously”, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, said on X, referring to the risks of AI technology.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz, on the TV programme “The View”, pointed to legislation to regulate AI’s “catastrophic risks”. Cruz oversees a Senate committee with oversight of the US Commerce Department, the agency with in-house AI safety researchers.
But US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he did not have any concerns about AI leading to human extinction.
“I have concerns that if we don’t win AI, we’re going to be put in a very bad position. We are leading China right now by a pretty good period”, he said in brief remarks to the media at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.
Meanwhile, a group in Yemen attempted to use Anthropic’s Claude chatbot to build guided rockets and missiles, the US firm has revealed, as Ansar Allah are on the offensive in the country.
In a report published on Thursday on how it had prevented illegal uses of Claude in several countries, Anthropic said it had “identified a cell of threat actors based in northern Yemen running three weapons development programmes”.
Those were “a guided rocket that used a commodity phone-class flight computer with final-phase homing guidance; a multi-stage ballistic missile with a stated range goal above 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles); and a multi-variant missile… that included a hypersonic glide vehicle variant”.
Anthropic said it had banned the relevant accounts as soon as it had detected the illegal activity.
While the company did not identify the actors in question, it is likely to involve the Ansar Allah, who control much of northern Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. — AFP
