Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm in 2023, thanks to the smashing debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The frenzy around the breakthrough technology has sparked an AI arms race between Big Tech firms and fueled massive rallies in related stocks. Here’s what 10 leading voices have said about the AI revolution – including the hopefuls and the critics. Loading Something is loading.
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Artificial intelligence has taken center stage this year, and its stunning rise is drawing both optimists and pessimists in droves.
The sudden frenzy around the breakthrough technology was set off by the blockbuster debut of OpenAI’s human-like language bot ChatGPT – triggering a tech race among industry giants including Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta to lead the AI boom.
The hype has also seen investors pour money into stocks best positioned to take advantage of the AI revolution, including Santa Clara-based chipmaker Nvidia.
While those bullish on the technology are hopeful it will lead to a “productivity boom,” others have warned it could cause significant harm to the world if unregulated.
Here’s what 10 leading names have said about the AI boom and what’s to come.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX”The advent of artificial general intelligence is called a singularity because it is so hard to predict what will happen after that. It’s very much a double-edged sword,” Musk said during his automaker’s annual shareholder meeting.
“There’s a strong probability that it will make life much better and that we’ll have an age of abundance. And there’s some chance that it goes wrong and destroys humanity. Hopefully that chance is small, but it’s not zero. We want to take whatever actions we can think of to minimize the probability that AI goes wrong,” he added.
“We need to make sure that we don’t have a Terminator scenario. That’s very important. It’s all fun and games until Terminator shows up,” he added.
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway CEO”There won’t be anything in AI that replaces the gene,” Buffett said recently during an annual shareholder meeting. “I’ll state that unqualifiedly,” he added.
Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman”I am personally skeptical of some of the hype that is going into artificial intelligence,” the 99-year old said during Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting. “I think old-fashioned intelligence works pretty well,” he continued.
Stanley Druckenmiller, Duquesne Family Office CEO”AI is very, very real and could be every bit as impactful as the internet,” Druckenmiller said recently, at the 2023 Sohn Investment Conference.
Paul Tudor Jones, billionaire investor”I do think the introduction of large language models [and] artificial intelligence, is going to create a productivity boom that we’ve only seen a few times in the last 75 years,” Jones said.
“Each of those three episodes were associated with productivity gains of somewhere between one and three percent. Let’s say that this large language model is going to give us a productivity boom of 1.5% over the next 5 years per year, which I think is possible,” Jones said in a recent interview with CNBC.
Steve Cohen, hedge fund billionaire”I’m making a prognostication — we’re going up,” Cohen said, according to Bloomberg. “I’m actually pretty bullish.”
Blythe Masters, former JP Morgan exec”We can see with our own eyes and feel and become enamored with the way in which these ingenious programs are able to interact with us,” Masters said on an episode of “Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein.”
“It will change not just the financial-services landscape, but pretty much everything we do,” she added.
There are downsides however, Masters continued. “The other risk with AI is if it grows too quickly, is unregulated and all of the inherent biases and abuses of the technology are unchecked,” she added.
Ben Snider, Goldman CIO”Over the next 10 years, AI could increase productivity by 1.5% per year. And that could increase S&P 500 profits by 30% or more over the next decade,” Snider told CNBC on Thursday.
“A lot of the favorable factors that led to that expansion (of S&P 500) earnings seem to be reversing,” he added. “But the real source of optimism now is productivity enhancements through artificial intelligence.”
“It’s clear to most investors that the immediate winners are in the technology sector,” Snider said. “The real question for investors is who are going to be winners down the road.”
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO”My worst fear is that we, the technology industry, cause significant harm to the world,” Altman told lawmakers on a Judiciary subcommittee panel.
“I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong,” he said of AI. “And we want to be vocal about that, we want to work with the government to prevent that from happening,” he added.
Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founderWhen asked whether the US government is prepared to police AI, Ohanian said: “No and I think there’s a bigger discussion here around our responsibility as voters to put folks into office that understand these very important technologies,” Ohanian said.
“I give credit to the White House for convening all of these AI leaders to get them in the loop. I think technologists have to be at the table here and I know there are hardworking bright folks in Washington and they and their teams absolutely need to be paying attention, digging in, and getting up to speed quickly on this because it’s an important issue and if we get it right it will be great for America.”