Andrew Ng Calls AI Extinction Warnings “Science Fiction”

AI pioneer Andrew Ng has pushed back against renewed warnings that increasingly powerful artificial intelligence systems could pose an existential threat to humanity, describing such concerns as “much more science fiction than science,” Bloomberg reported.

AI pioneer Andrew Ng has challenged warnings about the possibility of AI causing human extinction, while calling for practical safety and engineering measures. [Photo: AI Fund]

Ng, who helped launch Google Brain and co-founded Coursera, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV that he was “quite dismayed over the past two weeks” by renewed warnings about catastrophic AI risks.

“This wave of PR has kicked up again, for probably similar purposes,” Ng said, referring to what he sees as efforts by parts of the technology industry to influence regulation and generate publicity.

His comments followed the resignation of former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon, who accused the companies of “racing toward super-intelligent AI” and warned that AI could potentially “kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Bloomberg reported that Coxon's remarks helped bring the debate over AI's potential existential risks into the mainstream.

AI executives have offered differing views on how quickly the technology should advance.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have called for additional safeguards and measures to manage the risks associated with frontier AI.

Ng acknowledged that AI presents genuine risks, including cybersecurity threats, but argued that the industry should focus on practical engineering problems, testing and safeguards rather than concentrating primarily on human-extinction scenarios.