Princess Anne on Wednesday awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire) to leading artificial intelligence expert Professor Yoshua Bengio.
According to GB News, after receiving the honour, University of Montreal academic Yoshua Bengio highlighted the dangers of artificial intelligence in his message on the occasion.
“AI should scare us because right now I don’t think we’re building systems that are safe, at least they’re not reliable,” he said.
According to GB News, Professor Bengio serves as scientific director at the Canadian AI Hub and sits on the United Nations Scientific Advisory Board.
The Canadian-born researcher pointed to a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating disturbing patterns in AI behavior.
“A large number of scientific experiments now show that they behave as if they want to preserve themselves,” he said.
Professor Bengio revealed that recent findings have highlighted even more alarming trends.
He warned, “Lately, they want to prevent other AIs from being shut down. And they will be willing to lie, cheat, and, you know, violate our instructions in order to protect themselves or preserve another AI.”
The professor described these findings as extremely worrying, saying, “I think this should wake people up. This is very serious.”
When Professor Bengio was asked to compare the UK’s approach to AI with other countries, he suggested that speed of deployment is not the primary concern.
“I don’t think the UK should feel bad about how fast AI is being deployed, I’m more concerned that we’re not really paying attention to the consequences of those deployments,” he said.
