What Happened: On Sunday, Yann LeCun — Meta’s chief AI scientist and a professor at New York University — said the typical process for the development and deployment of new technology involves creating a prototype, testing it on a small scale, implementing it in a limited capacity, addressing any issues and improving its safety. 

Following this, governments step in to regulate the technology and establish safety standards.

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He seems to be referring to the aforementioned open letter, which called for all AI labs to immediately pause the training of systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months — until safety protocols are created, executed and evaluated by independent experts. 

LeCun went on to say that people are excessively concerned about the risk associated with AI because they think the moment a super-intelligence system is activated, humanity’s fate is sealed — an idea that is “preposterously stupid” and based on fundamental misinterpretation.

Why It’s Important: Previously, the godfather of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, also weighed in on the growing concerns about AI outsmarting humans and taking over the world. 

He said the actual risk comes with human’s increasing reliance on technology which could lead to mutual unintelligibility or insanity. 

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