Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that robots with Artificial Intelligence will eventually “eat us” in the near future.
Putin asked Arkady Volozh, the head of Russia’s largest technology firm, Yandex, how long it would be before smart robots eat humans.
“I hope never”, a baffled Arkady Volozh replied to Putin. “It’s not the first machine to be better than humans at something. An excavator digs better than we do with a shovel. But we don’t get eaten by excavators. A car moves faster than we do…”
Daily Mail reports: Putin, however, was unimpressed. He interjected, saying simply: ‘They don’t think.’
At the beginning of this month, Putin said that AI is ‘the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind’.
But he also said that alongside its ‘colossal opportunities’ are ‘threats that are difficult to predict’.
He added: ‘Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.’
The president also promised to share any ‘know-how’ that Russia acquires in the field to avoid conflict over the technology.
But in expressing his concern about the future of AI, he joins Tesla founder Elon Musk, who is strongly in favour of regulating its development.
The South African-born billionaire worries that robots could one day take up arms against humans, a view recently challenged by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who remains ‘optimistic’ about the future of AI.
