Building Safe AI: A Tutorial on Homomorphically Encrypted Deep Learning
&gt; Most recently, Stephen Hawking called for a new world government to govern the abilities that we give to Artificial Intelligence so that it doesn&#x27;t turn to destroy us.<p>Can someone explain to me why super-intelligent AI are an existential threat to humanity? There are certainly dangers, but wiping out humanity seems absurd and alarmist. I have not yet seen compelling evidence for a way that AI could destroy humanity.<p>I&#x27;ll use a couple examples to elucidate my question.<p>If Facebook suddenly had a super-intelligent AI, and Facebook lost control of it, the AI wouldn&#x27;t really be capable of that much. It could create fabricated truths to tell to people in an attempt to convince people to kill each other. This may work to some extent, but wouldn&#x27;t wipe out humanity. Convincing nation states to go to war with each other must still consider mutually assured destruction, and large, democratic states do not have an interest in a war of attrition.<p>If Boston Dynamics applied a super-intelligent AI to its robots, that robot still is not an existential threat to humanity because there are WAY more humans than there are robots. A simple counterargument is that the robot would know how to build new versions of itself. But that fails the practicality test because the equipment, parts, and supply chain for obtaining robotics built parts are still expensive and controlled by self-interested (greedy and life-preserving) humans.<p>If a super-intelligent AI was able to gain access to the entire military of the US, China, Russia, India, and Western Europe; well, that&#x27;s a pretty big problem. However, there exist many fail-safes and checks on that equipment. Could the AI do damage? Sure. Is this worth considering and trying to guard against? Sure. However, I&#x27;m unconvinced that this is a humanity-ending crisis.