- The CEO of an AI firm says AI may find humans so boring, it will want to say "goodbye" to us.
- "The worst case scenario is that it proliferates and basically it controls humanity," Emad Mostaque said.
Artificial intelligence may one day find humans so dreadfully boring, it'll take over most jobs and do away with the need for mankind altogether, says the CEO of the London-based Stability AI.
"Humans are a bit boring — it will be like, goodbye!" Emad Mostaque told the BBC in an interview published on Sunday.
Mostaque told the BBC that he sees a scenario where the internet is crawling with "agents" that can't be controlled and are "more capable" than humans.
"The worst case scenario is that it proliferates and basically it controls humanity," Mostaque said.
Mostaque predicted to the BBC added that AI will have a "bigger economic impact than the pandemic" in wiping out jobs.
He added that there might one day be a shocking development in AI — one that will likely spur governments into taking action against the technology. This development, he said, would be similar to how people started taking Covid-19 seriously after Tom Hanks contracted the virus.
Mostaque's Stability AI runs Stable Diffusion, an artificial intelligence-operated tool that allows users to generate images from short text prompts. And while his company's technology has disrupted industries already, Mostaque himself has a pessimistic view of the apocalyptic future AI might cause.
Mostaque was one of more than 1,000 leaders who signed a letter to slow down AI's development.
The letter, which Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also signed, called for a six-month pause on the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 to assess its risks and implement guardrails.
Earlier in March, Mostaque predicted that AI would one day take over the jobs of most tech workers. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs 2023 Disruptive Technology Symposium in London, he said that there will be "no programmers in five years."
"AI can absorb information very quickly and spit it out," Mostaque said in March. "It's a bit like a really talented intern with a bad memory."
Mostaque's Stability AI is worth $1 billion, and with more cash expected to flow in, it is speculated that the company's true valuation is around $4 billion.
The company is currently facing two lawsuits, one from Getty Images and another from a group of artists, over copyright issues and "unlawful competition."
Getty Images alleged in a statement on January 17 that Stability AI "unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright."
When questioned about the lawsuit, Mostaque told BBC: "What if you have a robot that's walking around and looking at things, do you have to close its eyes if it sees anything?"
Stability AI did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment sent outside regular working hours.