This is FRESH air.
I'm Dave Davies.
For decades,
scientists have dreamed of computers so sophisticated they could think like humans and worried what might happen
if those machines began to act independently.
Those fears and aspirations accelerated in 2022 when a company called OpenAI released its artificial intelligence chatbot called ChatGPT.
Our guest, veteran investigative reporter Gary Rivlin,
has burrowed deep into the AI world to understand the plans and motivations of those artificial intelligence and what impact they could have for good or ill.
In his new book, Rivlin writes that In March of 2023,
there were more than 3,000 startup companies in the US working on artificial intelligence,
with new ones popping up at a rate of 30 per day.
While AI is already in use in some fields, such as medical diagnosis,
many believe the field is on the verge of a new breakthrough,
achieving artificial general intelligence systems that truly match or approximate human cognitive ab.
Some believe it could be as transformational to human society as the Industrial Revolution.
But many fear where it may take us.
A poll of AI researchers in 2022 found that half of them believe there's at least a 1 in 10 chance that humanity will go extinct due to our inability to control AI.
In 2023,
President Joe Biden issued an executive order imposing some regulatory safeguards on AI development.
But President Trump quickly repealed that order upon taking office,