SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order asking AI researchers to speed up cybersecurity efforts and develop a "kill switch" in case artificial intelligence gets out of control.
The move comes as top AI companies are sounding apocalyptic warnings about the technology they are building. In an essay, Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei said it is important to slow the pace of AI development to make sure AI doesn't outsmart humans.
I spoke with Dr. Darby Vickers, a professor at USD who teaches a course on AI and ethics, and asked her whether we are living in the early stages of a doomsday scenario.
"Are we living in the first part of the Terminator?" I asked.
Vickers said her department chair had raised the same question, and she had directed him to an essay on AI usage by Melanie Mitchell.
"I don't think we're at the sort of level of issues of things like Skynet," Vickers said.
She followed by saying that it would be important to regulate when and where AI technology would be implemented, especially in drones or other military applications. Vickers also believes more regulation is needed on the cybersecurity front to prevent incidents like the OpenAI Hugging Face breach from happening again.
"No matter what, the real problem that we're having is not that the tools are doing things that are so sophisticated that we can't turn them off, but rather, the cybersecurity boundaries around the spaces in which the models are being trained or tested," Vickers said. "Instead of coming up with the opportunity for a kill switch, it seems like the sort of best place to get started is thinking through what cybersecurity practices can be increased."
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