Humans at grave risk, 42 per cent CEOs believe AI can destroy humanity in 5-10 years

By Sneha SahaAI or artificial intelligence is the buzzword in the world of tech nowadays. While AI can be of benefit in various situations, there are drawbacks to it as well. This is what the top tech leaders of the world believe. With the advancement of AI, top tech CEOs, including Twitter and Tesla head Elon Musk, are worried about artificial intelligence taking over humanity. According to the latest survey conducted by CNN at the Yale CEO Summit earlier this week, 42 percent of of CEOs believe AI can take over humanity in the next few years.

The report states that around 42 percent of CEOs and top business tycoons believe that AI has the potential to “destroy humanity five to ten years from now.” The survey is said to have included 119 CEOs from a cross-section of businesses including Walmart, Coca-Cola, Xerox, Zoom, and many more. “It’s pretty dark and alarming,” Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld said, referring to the shocking findings.

As per the report, nearly 34 percent of CEOs said AI could potentially destroy humanity in ten years, while around 8 percent of them said that the destruction could happen in just five years from now. To add some relief, nearly 58 percent of the CEOs said that AI will never take over humans and that they are “not worried.”

Now the findings have come to light weeks after top tech tycoons like Elon Musk and even the founder of OpenAI highlighted the danger of AI. Just a few weeks ago, dozens of AI industry leaders and a few others signed a statement warning of the “extinction” risk from AI. The statement was signed by ChatGPT creator Sam Altman, Geoffrey Hinton, who is said to be the “godfather of AI,” Musk, and many other top executives from Google and Microsoft. These tech leaders said that society must take measures to guard against the dangers of AI. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement noted. In fact, when the world was going crazy over ChatGPT, Musk – in one of his tweets — hinted that the AI war could soon end civilization. It appears he wasn’t kidding then. Especially now that Musk has signed an open letter that calls for a halt to the development of AI systems for at least 6 months.

In fact, recently, during his India visit, OpenAI CEO Altman said that AI could potentially replace some jobs. He mentioned that ‘some jobs’ will be replaced with AI but new ones will be created as well. When he was asked if AI would cause job loss, Altman said, “Every tech revolution leads to job change. In two generations, we can adapt to any amount of labor market change, and there are new jobs, and they are usually better. That is going to happen here, too. Some jobs are going to go away. There will be new, better jobs that are difficult to imagine today.”

While many business leaders debate the dangers of AI, there are some who disagree and believe that artificial intelligence adds to efficiency in the workplace and more. During the survey, the CEOs indicated that AI will have the most transformative impact on three key industries – healthcare, professional services/IT, and media/digital.