One of the so-called "godfathers" of artificial intelligence (AI) claimed that if he had known how quickly it would advance, he would have emphasized safety over usefulness.
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Professor Yoshua Bengio admitted to feeling "lost" about his life's work to the BBC.
The computer scientist made his remarks after AI specialists warned that it might wipe out mankind.
Professor Bengio, who has backed proposals for AI regulation, stated that he opposed giving military organizations access to AI technology.
He is the second of the three "godfathers" of AI, who are renowned for their groundbreaking work in the industry, to express reservations about the direction and rate of its development.
The term artificial intelligence (AI) refers to a computer's capacity for complicated activities that previously required human intelligence to complete.
AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, which seem to respond to inquiries in a human-like manner, are a recent example.
However, some worry that sophisticated computing capability could be employed negatively, such as the creation of lethal new chemical weapons.
Prof. Bengio told them that he was worried about "bad actors" gaining access to AI, particularly as technology advanced and became more potent.
"It might be the military, it could be terrorists, or it could be a deranged person who is extremely enraged. This might be really hazardous if it's simple to program these AI systems so that someone asks them to perform something terrible.
"If they're smarter than us, then it's hard for us to stop these systems or to prevent damage," he continued.
Since his life's work, which had provided him with direction and a sense of identity, was no longer clear to him, Prof. Bengio acknowledged that these worries were having a personal impact on him.
People who work in the AI business "find it challenging emotionally," he said.
"I guess you could say I'm lost. But you must persist, engage others in conversation, and persuade them to share your point of view.
The Canadian recently co-signed two declarations advocating caution regarding the potential dangers of AI. The rate of advancement, according to some academics and business professionals, might lead to harmful AI being used by "bad actors" to purposefully create harm or opting to produce evil on its own.
Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, another "godfather," just announced his retirement from Google and issued the same cautionary statements as Prof. Bengio.
Apocalyptic concerns are exaggerated, according to Prof. Yann LeCun, the third "godfather" who, along with Prof. Bengio and Dr. Hinton, received the coveted Turing Award for his groundbreaking work.
Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla and Twitter, has also expressed his worries.
At a recent Wall Street Journal event, he declared, "I don't think AI will try to destroy humanity, but it might put us under strict controls."
"There is a remote possibility that it will wipe out humanity. Nearly zero but not quite possible.
According to Prof. Bengio, all businesses creating potent AI products must register.
"Governments need to track what they're doing, they need to be able to audit them, and that's just the minimum thing we do for any other sector, like building airplanes, cars, or pharmaceuticals," he said.
"We also want some sort of accreditation for anyone who works closely with these systems; this area requires ethical training. By the way, most computer scientists don't understand it.
But not everyone in the industry agrees that AI will lead to humanity's demise; some contend that there are more pressing issues that need to be resolved.
The propagation of false information by chatbots, AI bias, and predictive policing, according to Dr. Sasha Luccioni, a research scientist with the AI company Huggingface, are all examples of "very concrete harms" that society should pay attention to.
She continued, "We should concentrate on it rather than the speculative fear that AI will wipe out mankind.
There are already several instances of AI helping society. A paraplegic guy was able to regain his ability to walk by simply thinking about it last week thanks to an AI-powered technology that discovered a new medication.
But this is set against worries about how far-reaching the effects of AI will be on various nations' economies. Businesses are already using AI tools to replace human employees, which is one of the reasons Hollywood scriptwriters are currently on strike.
The state of AI today, according to Prof. Bengio, can always be improved. It is the same as climate change.
"The atmosphere contains a lot of carbon. Ideally, we shouldn't have done that, but let's see what we can do right now.
