Could AI cause human extinction? Experts reveal how likely that really is

Could humans suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs?

While there’s still a lot of uncertainty around the risk potentially posed by artificial intelligence, some experts have concerns AI could trigger humankind’s downfall.

According to a paper for which 2,778 AI researchers were surveyed, a majority of the scientists (58%) believe that there is a 5% chance of human extinction or other catastrophic outcomes from AI.

“It’s an important signal that most AI researchers don’t find it strongly implausible that advanced AI destroys humanity,” paper co-author Katja Grace, of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, California, told New Scientist. “I think this general belief in a non-minuscule risk is much more telling than the exact percentage risk.”

Respondents anticipate that the tech’s chances of successfully completing certain sample tasks within a decade — such as writing songs of the caliber of Taylor Swift compositions or coding a payment processing site from scratch — is about 50% or higher.

But more complicated tasks, such as installing electrical wiring or solving mathematical mysteries, are predicted to take longer to achieve.