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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Artificial general intelligence | 7/8 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T11:01:56.982213+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Revitalising environmental conservation and biodiversity === AGI could significantly contribute to preserving the natural environment and protecting endangered species. By analyzing satellite imagery, climate data, and wildlife patterns, AGI systems could identify environmental threats earlier and recommend targeted conservation strategies. AGI could help optimize land use, monitor illegal activities like poaching or deforestation in real-time, and support global efforts to restore ecosystems. Advanced predictive models developed by AGI could also assist in reversing biodiversity loss, ensuring the survival of critical species and maintaining ecological balance.
=== Enhancing space exploration and colonization === AGI could revolutionize humanity's ability to explore and settle beyond Earth. With its advanced problem-solving skills, AGI could autonomously manage complex space missions, including navigation, resource management, and emergency response. It could accelerate the design of life support systems, habitats, and spacecraft optimized for extraterrestrial environments. Furthermore, AGI could support efforts to colonize planets like Mars by simulating survival scenarios and helping humans adapt to new worlds, expanding the possibilities for interplanetary civilization.
== Risks ==
=== Existential risks ===
AGI may represent multiple types of existential risk, which are risks that threaten "the premature extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development". The risk of human extinction from AGI has been the topic of many debates, but there is also the possibility that the development of AGI would lead to a permanently flawed future. Notably, it could be used to spread and preserve the set of values of whoever develops it. If humanity still has moral blind spots similar to slavery in the past, AGI might irreversibly entrench them, preventing moral progress. Furthermore, AGI could facilitate mass surveillance and indoctrination, which could be used to create an entrenched repressive worldwide totalitarian regime. There is also a risk for the machines themselves. If machines that are sentient or otherwise worthy of moral consideration are mass-created in the future, engaging in a civilizational path that indefinitely neglects their welfare and interests could be an existential catastrophe. Considering how much AGI could improve humanity's future and help reduce other existential risks, Toby Ord calls these existential risks "an argument for proceeding with due caution", not for "abandoning AI".
==== Risk of loss of control and human extinction ==== The thesis that AI poses an existential risk for humans, and that this risk needs more attention, is controversial but has been endorsed in 2023 by many public figures, AI researchers and CEOs of AI companies such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis and Sam Altman. In 2014, Stephen Hawking criticized widespread indifference:
So, facing possible futures of incalculable benefits and risks, the experts are surely doing everything possible to ensure the best outcome, right? Wrong. If a superior alien civilisation sent us a message saying, 'We'll arrive in a few decades,' would we just reply, 'OK, call us when you get here—we'll leave the lights on?' Probably not—but this is more or less what is happening with AI.The potential fate of humanity has sometimes been compared to the fate of gorillas threatened by human activities. The comparison states that greater intelligence allowed humanity to dominate gorillas, which are now vulnerable in ways that they could not have anticipated. As a result, the gorilla has become an endangered species, not out of malice, but simply as collateral damage from human activities. The skeptic Yann LeCun considers that AGIs will have no desire to dominate humanity and that we should be careful not to anthropomorphize them and interpret their intentions as we would for humans. He said that people won't be "smart enough to design super-intelligent machines, yet ridiculously stupid to the point of giving it moronic objectives with no safeguards". On the other side, the concept of instrumental convergence suggests that almost whatever their goals, intelligent agents will have reasons to try to survive and acquire more power as intermediary steps to achieving these goals. And that this does not require having emotions. Many scholars who are concerned about existential risk advocate for more research into solving the "control problem" to answer the question: what types of safeguards, algorithms, or architectures can programmers implement to maximise the probability that their recursively-improving AI would continue to behave in a friendly, rather than destructive, manner after it reaches superintelligence? Solving the control problem is complicated by the AI arms race (which could lead to a race to the bottom of safety precautions in order to release products before competitors), and the use of AI in weapon systems. The thesis that AI can pose existential risk also has detractors. Skeptics usually say that AGI is unlikely in the short term, or that concerns about AGI distract from other issues related to current AI. Former Google fraud czar Shuman Ghosemajumder considers that for many people outside of the technology industry, existing chatbots and LLMs are already perceived as though they were AGI, leading to further misunderstanding and fear. Some researchers say that the communication campaigns on AI existential risk by certain AI groups (such as OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, and Conjecture) may be an at attempt at regulatory capture and to inflate interest in their products. In 2023, the CEOs of Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic, along with other industry leaders and researchers, issued a joint statement asserting that "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."