by Muvija M and Martin Coulter
LONDON (Reuters) – The chairman of U.S. technology giant Microsoft, Brad Smith, said on Thursday there was no likelihood that an artificial super-intelligence, known as generative AI (GAI), would be created in the next 12 years. months, warning that the technology could take several decades to see the light of day.
His comments come a year after OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed AI startup, launched chatbot ChatGPT, which sparked a wave of investment as concerns over the risk of an existential threat to humanity posed by such technologies.
The founder of OpenAI, Sam Altman, was recently ousted from the management of the company before taking back the reins at the end of a series of several days which set the world of “tech” in turmoil.
According to recent reports, Sam Altman was ousted from the company after internal disputes over a potentially dangerous AI discovery.
Brad Smith, however, denied these allegations.
“I don’t think that’s the case at all,” he told reporters in Britain on Thursday. “I think there were some differences between the board and others, but it wasn’t fundamentally an issue like that.”
Brad Smith said that “it is absolutely unlikely that we will see the advent of so-called AGI, where computers are more powerful than humans, in the next 12 months.”
“It will take years, if not decades, but I think the time to focus on security is now,” he added.
(Reporting Martin Coulter; Dagmarah Mackos, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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