Image source, Getty Images By Kali Hays Technology reporter, San Francisco Published 5 hours ago Not all employees of major firms working on artificial intelligence (AI) think the technology spells doom for humanity.
In text exchanges and conversations, multiple people who have worked for companies including OpenAI, Meta and DeepMind were sceptical of the idea that unchecked AI development would lead to tools that could kill people en masse.
"Lol", "Haaaaaa" and "Bringing the luls" were among the reactions the BBC received to a recent flurry of high-profile warnings by some people in the industry.
While these fears go back decades, claims made last week by Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic employee, went viral and were echoed by others in the sector who urged a slowdown in development.
The idea that a future AI tool or agent, an AI bot that is programmed to operate somewhat autonomously, could endanger people has been supported online by employees of Anthropic, as well as OpenAI, Deepmind and Elon Musk, who has an AI startup called xAI.
All of the workers who spoke with the BBC did so on condition of anonymity as they were not permitted to speak to the press. Their identities are known to the BBC.
"My first thought was, 'That guy?'" said a former OpenAI employee who knew of Coxon when they both worked at the company.
The person, who now works at another AI company, said their amusement at the new moment of existential AI fears largely stemmed from how little detail had been provided by its proponents to defend the notion that all of human life was at stake.
The claims are "always vague", the person said, adding that when they sound specific, they tend toward major jumps in reasoning or hypothetical circumstances.
Coxon has said a group of AI agents, based on AI models that do not currently exist, could decide to create and then aim a biological weapon, but he did not detail how exactly that would take place.
Figure caption, 'There is a possibility of human extinction,' former Anthropic employee says about AI
Rishub Jain, who this summer founded the AI safety research firm Sampura Research after spending seven years at DeepMind, told the BBC that the current tone among many people working in AI with regard to fresh fears had "definitely been a little jokey".
"People have been talking about this idea for many years now, so people in AI companies didn't just wake up last week thinking 'Oh no, AI is going to kill everyone,'" Jain said. "If this was all new, it would be a different tone."
Colin Fraser, a data scientist at Meta, wrote on social media last week that there was no real evidence that AI models would inevitably pursue a goal leading to human death.
While Fraser's explanation was technical and specific, he hit a light-hearted note to summarise it: "LLMs [large language models] won't wipe out humanity because they just don't have that dog in them."
The phrase "that dog in them" is common slang that usually denotes a fierce drive.
Despite the jokes, AI workers and researchers have shared concerns about the genuine, immediate risks posed by the technology they are developing.
"The conversation among experts has been much more nuanced, but essentially everyone agrees there are a wide variety of risks that are all important to consider and mitigate," Jain said.
Such risks include preventing users and hackers from forcing an AI tool's guardrails to fail. And there are…