Marc Andreessen on AI safety and AI for the world

So far I have explained why four of the five most often proposed risks of AI are not actually real – AI will not come to life and kill us, AI will not ruin our society, AI will not cause mass unemployment, and AI will not cause an ruinous increase in inequality. But now let’s address the fifth, the one I actually agree with: AI will make it easier for bad people to do bad things.

In some sense this is a tautology. Technology is a tool. Tools, starting with fire and rocks, can be used to do good things – cook food and build houses – and bad things – burn people and bludgeon people. Any technology can be used for good or bad. Fair enough. And AI will make it easier for criminals, terrorists, and hostile governments to do bad things, no question.

This causes some people to propose, well, in that case, let’s not take the risk, let’s ban AI now before this can happen. Unfortunately, AI is not some esoteric physical material that is hard to come by, like plutonium. It’s the opposite, it’s the easiest material in the world to come by – math and code.

The AI cat is obviously already out of the bag.

Here is the full essay, self-recommending…