The emergence of AI with superhuman capabilities will come far sooner than previously thought. As AI advances, so does the potential for harm—including grave risks to democracy and human rights.
In a new Journal of Democracy essay, Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio urges swift action to prepare for what is to come. AI’s fast advance could lead to the accumulation of vast amounts of wealth and power in the hands of single individuals, companies, and countries.
“In the extreme,” Bengio writes, “a few individuals controlling superhuman AIs would accrue a level of power never before seen in human history, a blatant contradiction with the very principle of democracy and a major threat to it.”
Read this essay on our website at https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/ai-and-catastrophic-risk/.
The Journal of Democracy has been following the impact of technological innovation on democracy around the world. Below are three of our latest.
- Subversion Inc: The Age of Private Espionage
By Ronald J. Deibert - Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights
By Eileen Donahoe and Megan MacDuffee Metzger - How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Repression
By Steven Feldstein
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