A former Google executive who helped pioneer the company’s foray into artificial intelligence fears the technology will be used to create “more lethal pandemics.”
Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder and former head of applied AI at Google’s DeepMind, said the use of artificial intelligence will enable humans to access information with potentially deadly consequences.
“The darkest scenario is that people will experiment with pathogens, engineered synthetic pathogens that might end up accidentally or intentionally being more transmissible,” Suleyman said The Diary of a CEO podcast on Monday.
“They can spread faster or [be] more lethal…They cause more harm or potentially kill, like a pandemic,” he added, calling for tighter regulation on AI software.
Suleyman said his biggest fear is that within the next five years a “kid in Russia” could genetically engineer a pathogen and unleash it so as to trigger a pandemic that’s “more lethal” than anything the world has seen thus far.
“That’s where we need containment. We have to limit access to the tools and the know-how to carry out that kind of experimentation,” he said.
Hellbound and Down 