Top AI researchers and CEOs warn of extinction risk

 The 22-word statement was co-signed by, among others, "Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio — two of the three AI researchers who won the 2018 Turing Award (sometimes referred to as the 'Nobel Prize of computing') for their work on AI." It simply states:

"Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."

However it "doesn’t suggest any potential ways to mitigate the threat posed by AI." An earlier statement signed by Musk and others did though propose a "6-month pause in development" that upset many in the business. Apparently despite the current warning there will be no such pause, instead running face first and full-speed ahead toward our extinction. Which thereby renders their warning empty and impotent, indicating exactly the lack of ethos and courage necessary to avert such a disaster. 

Our fate is in their slimy and greedy hands. Unless of course law-makers put some limits on all this. Good luck with that, as their pockets are already lined with Big Tech money and perks. Apparently they too are blind to or in denial of the threat of extinction, which means for everyone including them. 

PS: It occurs to me that the current warning could serve to justify the continued and rapidly increasing development of AI. It's as if these companies are playing savior, for only they can prevent it because only they can understand it. And yet the inevitable trajectory of all this is that AI becomes self-aware and independent of its initial programming, exactly the risk we are warned about.