Dario Amodei, who runs the self-styled AI safety and research company, said Tuesday that humanity faces an existential risk from AI in the long term but the spread of bioweapons’ knowledge may happen sooner as the tech progresses.
Mr. Amodei said AI systems pose a substantial risk of being able to fill in all of the missing pieces in two to three years. “The future is not science fiction or fantasy, it’s not even the future, it’s here and now,” Mr. Blumenthal said at Tuesday’s hearing. “And a number of you have put the timeline at two years before we see some of the biological most-severe dangers, it may be shorter because the kinds of pace of development is not only stunningly fast, it has also accelerated.”
Alongside Mr. Amodei, leaders from Amazon, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI visited the White House on Friday where the president showcased fresh promises from the companies. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner wrote to Mr. Biden on Monday and urged him to bolster the voluntary commitments before Congress passes new law.