Vyacheslav Beresnev, executive director of the Association of Laboratories for the Development of Artificial Intelligence and a market expert with Russia's National Technology Initiative group Neuronet, said the main risk from artificial intelligence over the next year has nothing to do with machines seizing control of the internet.
Instead, he said, the real threat is the use of AI as a weapon in information and cyberwars.
Speaking to the broadcaster RT, Beresnev said panic over a supposed robot uprising was a media headline rather than a technical forecast.
Damage worth billions
Beresnev said the main risk of the coming year is not the internet being taken over but the use of neural networks as weapons in information and cyberwars. He said damage running into hundreds of billions of rubles or dollars is possible because of targeted attacks on infrastructure or large scale disinformation campaigns, rather than because of any loss of control over algorithms.
He argued that calls to urgently regulate everything often sound noble but in practice strict, costly standards cut off small companies and startups, entrenching the dominance of large corporations. He added that one sided restraint in geopolitics creates a dangerous imbalance between countries.
Rules of the road for AI
Rather than trying to artificially slow progress, Beresnev proposed that the international community work out transparent rules, comparing the idea to the framework governing nuclear energy. He said that in this new reality, the winner will not be whoever has the most powerful AI, but whoever learns to manage it safely and effectively.
Trump's earlier comments
United States President Donald Trump earlier rejected claims that AI could take over the world and destroy humanity. He wrote that talk of AI taking over the world, destroying humanity and bringing about other disasters is a deception. Before that, Trump said he was not concerned about the possibility of AI slipping out of control.
