The Pope's AI Guy Is Worried About 'Cartel' Behavior Among Big Labs

The Pope's AI Guy Is Worried About'Cartel' Behavior Among Big Labs Paolo Benanti tells WIRED that hysteria over whether godlike AI could destroy humanity is distracting from the need for public debate about how to govern the technology. Recently, warnings from researchers inside the world's largest artificial intelligence labs about the rapid pace of development have led to panic about the possibility that the technology could extinguish humanity . Those warnings are predicated on the idea that--propelled by ferocious competition and a rivalry between the US and China--labs are barreling toward superintelligent models whose abilities will far surpass those of humans. But according to Father Paolo Benanti, a priest who advises the Catholic Church on AI, the handwaving over superintelligence distracts from the need for open debate about how to constrain the companies building the technology. By casting the problem as so complex that only they can solve it, he says, the big labs exclude everyone else from the conversation.