The only leading-edge cutting-edge AIs that are impressive come out of these big tech companies with billions of dollars. There's the cost of a top-tier AI researcher right now, it's said in the industry, is the same as the NNFL quarterback. It might be possible to sort of regulate it and have the public have a say about exactly how these technologies are going to be used. And in the end, I think the big tech companies will be respectful of that because they want to make a bunch of money and they want the public not to hate them.
They operate according to rules we can never fully understand. They can be unreliable, uncontrollable, and misaligned with human values. They're fast becoming as intelligent as humans--and they're exclusively in the hands of profit-seeking tech companies. "They," of course, are the latest versions of AI, which herald, according to neuroscientist and writer Erik Hoel, a species-level threat to humanity. Listen as he tells EconTalk's Russ Roberts why we need to treat AI as an existential threat.