A hot potato: Warren Buffett, one of the ten richest people in the world, has once again spoken about the dangers of AI. The Berkshire Hathaway CEO reiterated a previous statement comparing the technology’s dangers to those of nuclear weapons while also warning that it will boost scamming numbers exponentially.
Speaking at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting, Buffett talked about generative AI’s well-documented ability to deceive people.
“Scamming has always been part of the American scene […] if I was interested in investing in scamming, it’s gonna be the growth industry of all time and it’s enabled, in a way, by AI,” Buffett said.
Generative AI has been used to scam people for a while now. We heard last year that criminals were using it to spoof voices of targets’ families and friends, attempting to convince them to hand over money. The same voice cloning tech was used in January to try and convince New Hampshire voters that Joe Biden was telling them not to vote in the Democratic primary election. The president later said that he wanted to ban AI voice impersonations.
Buffett’s own image has also been used by scammers, in a convincing deepfake video that asked people for cash. “I practically would have sent money to myself over in some crazy country,” he said.
Buffett went on to repeat a dire warning he made last year: that the creation of modern, generative AI could be likened to the invention of nuclear weapons.
“We let the genie out of the bottle when we developed nuclear weapons,” he said. “That genie’s been doing some terrible things lately. The power of the genie scares the hell out of me.”
“AI is somewhat similar,” Buffett added. “We may wish we’d never seen that genie.”
At 93, Buffett is the first to admit that he’s no expert when it comes to artificial intelligence, but “that doesn’t mean I deny its existence or importance or anything of the sort.” He also said that AI has enormous potential for good – as well as enormous potential for harm. “I just don’t know how that plays out” the CEO concluded.
Buffett, the ninth richest person on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index with a fortune of $12.3 billion, isn’t the biggest fan of certain modern technologies – he once said that he wouldn’t pay $25 for all the Bitcoin in the world. However, Berkshire Hathaway’s largest investment holdings are in Apple, which promises that a major AI reveal is coming soon.
In related news, US State Department arms control official Paul Dean last week said that Washington has made a “clear and strong commitment” to keep humans, not AI, in control of nuclear weapons. The official called on China and Russia to make similar statements.
