Azeem Azhar

This idea, horrible outcomes, suicides amongst them.

It's a horrible risk, but that's not the only risk that you see.

So just unpick and unpack the societal level risks that you're

worried about?

But, you know, if we come back to the consciousness question, one of the reasons these apps are so engaging, you know, the chatbots, ChatGPT and so on, and engaging in a way that previous chatbots have not been is...

that they do have that social intelligence, that they can look at our cues from our text and perhaps infer from the data they have where we might be heading.

This is the first time we get to use a computer without having to think about using a computer.

It's a bit like in one of the terrible Star Trek spinoff movies when they beam back to Earth in 2050 to rescue the whales.

Why were they doing this?

But Scotty picks up a computer mouse and says, computer, design me a so-and-so.

And of course,

This was before you and your colleagues at DeepMind had figured all this out and the computer does nothing.

I mean, it is amazing.

And it's one of the reasons why, you know, within a couple of years, a couple of billion of us are interacting with systems like this.

I mean, market dynamics seem to push us down this path that you've argued in your previous essay and just now is quite dangerous.

You know, I recognize a lot of what you say because obviously I've been following this debate for a long time.

And it's hard for people outside the industry to recognize how it's been such a priority in a way alongside all of the scientific research and the market distribution.

But we do sit with this problem that I think you write about, and Anil Seth, who's a professor at Sussex University, recently wrote in a fantastic essay, which is essentially, we're not designed to look at something that looks like it's got consciousness, walks like it's got consciousness, says it has consciousness, and not think that it has that particular attribute.

And the engagement that we might have with

consumer products or products in the enterprise may correlate with the emotional connection, you know, so the market selecting for super conscious AI.