Google DeepMind Chair Demis Hassabis on the two biggest risks of AI, and why he's still optimistic we can solve them: Hassabis starts by rejecting the extremes of the AI debate: "I'd like to inject a bit of balance and calm to this debate and advocate for a sensible middle way." He then breaks the danger down into two categories of risk that need to be mitigated. Risk #1: Misalignment "This is where the AI system doesn't do what we instruct it to do or somehow circumvents its guardrails." Risk #2: Misuse "Where a bad actor repurposes the general technology that was built for good intent but repurposes it for harmful ends." He doesn't sugarcoat either one. By his own admission, even the people building this technology don't fully understand it yet: "This is a very new technology and there are a lot of unknowns and uncertainties and there are things that even the top scientists in the field don't fully understand yet about it. And I have to say the chance of something bad accidentally happening if we get things wrong is definitely non zero. So we should take these risks very seriously." So why is he optimistic? "I'm a huge believer in human ingenuity and the good news is I'm very confident and optimistic that we can collectively address these risks and find solutions to these technical problems, but only if we collectively give ourselves the time and space to get it right. And that's the critical thing." His optimism comes with a condition attached: we have to take the time to get it right. In practice, he says that means "careful thought and considered approaches using rigorous scientific methods to get the technical foundations right." It also means better testing. Hassabis has called in an essay for "new standards for testing frontier AI capabilities that are dynamic, adaptable and meet the moment and hopefully are quickly adopted by the international community." And those standards only work if countries adopt them together: "I really think that we need international cooperation around these standards for them to be effective." But solving misalignment and misuse doesn't end the conversation. @demishassabis argues that even a technically safe AI leaves bigger questions open: "Even if we get the technical challenges right, there are of course deep and complex economic and philosophical questions to answer. What values do we want to live by? What will meaning and purpose be in this new era?" And those questions, he says, don't belong to engineers: "Resolving these questions obviously cannot and should not be left to technologists alone. We need a collaboration of the best minds from all parts of society from the arts, the humanities and philosophy to help define what this new chapter should be." He says this is why DeepMind launched the DeepMind Institute: to help bring these different disciplines into the same discussion. His conclusion is that the outcome isn't predetermined: "The future is not yet written. We must all lean in and use this precious window to shape this technology for the benefit of all humanity. And what we collectively do now will determine the next era and the next chapter of civilization." And if we manage the risks well, the upside is enormous: "By safely stewarding AGI into the world, we can enter a new golden age of scientific discovery and progress and usher in a bright future of incredible human flourishing."