AI to kill humanity in 5-10 years: Top Tech CEOs, including Elon Musk

AI is the buzzword in the world of technology today. While AI can be beneficial in a number of situations, it also has drawbacks. This is what the world's top tech leaders believe. With the advancement of AI, top tech CEOs, including Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, are concerned that artificial intelligence will take over humanity. As per the latest poll conducted by CNN at the Yale CEO Summit earlier this week, 42 per cent of CEOs believe that AI may dominate humanity in the coming years.

The report states that around 42 per cent of CEOs and top business tycoons believe that AI has the potential to "destroy humanity within five to 10 years." The survey is said to have included 119 CEOs from various companies, including Walmart, Coca-Cola, Xerox, Zoom and many more. "It's quite dark and alarming," said Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, referring to the startling findings. As per the report, nearly 34 per cent of CEOs said AI could potentially destroy humanity in ten years, while around 8 per cent said destruction could occur just five years from now. To add some relief, nearly 58 per cent of CEOs said AI will never take over from humans, and they're "not worried."

Now the findings have come to light weeks after tech moguls 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 risk of "extinction" for AI. ChatGPT creator Sam Altman signed the statement, Geoffrey Hinton, said to be the "godfather of AI," Musk, and many other top executives at Google and Microsoft. These tech leaders said that society must take steps to protect itself against the dangers of AI. "Mitigate AI extinction risk should be a global priority along with other societal risks such as pandemics and nuclear war," the statement said. In fact, when the world was going crazy over ChatGPT, Musk, in one of his tweets, hinted that AI warfare could soon wipe out civilization. He looks like he wasn't kidding, then. Especially now that Musk has signed an open letter calling for halting the development of AI systems for at least 6 months.

In fact, recently, during his visit to India, OpenAI CEO Altman said that AI could potentially replace some jobs. He mentioned that 'some jobs' will be replaced by AI, but new ones will also be created. Asked if AI would cause job losses, Altman said: "Every technological revolution leads to a job change. In two generations, we can adapt to any change in the job market, and there are new jobs, and usually they are better". That will also happen here. Some jobs are going to disappear. There will be new and better jobs that are hard to imagine today.”

While many business leaders debate the dangers of AI, there are some who disagree, believing that AI increases efficiency in the workplace and more. During the survey, CEOs indicated that AI would have the most transformational impact in three key industries: healthcare, professional services/IT, and media/digital.