Top CEOs are increasingly sounding the alarm over the need to regulate AI. Here's what the top execs at Google, Tesla, IBM, and others have said about the advanced tech.
- Artificial intelligence holds immense promise, but if left unchecked the tech can also result in potentially damaging consequences.
- Many CEOs are bullish on AI, but several prominent business leaders are increasing their calls for new regulations to guide its development.
- Others, like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, have warned that it's the "biggest exisential threat" to the human race.
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Artificial intelligence holds immense promise to revamp whole industries, but there are also potentially devastating consequences that can occur if the technology is left unchecked.
That's why, amid heightened public scrutiny of AI, top CEOs are increasingly pushing for new regulations to govern AI - but with some caveats.
"We need to be clear-eyed about what could go wrong. There are real concerns about the potential negative consequences of AI, from deepfakes to nefarious uses of facial recognition," Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a recent op-ed in the Financial Times. "There is no question in my mind that artificial intelligence needs to be regulated. It is too important not to."
Other executives like Elon Musk are more direct: The Tesla CEO previously said it's the "biggest existential threat" to the human race.
Business Insider compiled some of the comments from top executives on how AI should be overseen and the potential detrimental effects of the technology that must be managed.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai
Despite the influence of Alphabet - the company is one of a handful of firms to be valued at higher than $1 trillion - Pichai says it can't be the responsible of just one organization or sector to tackle the issues around AI.
"While there is already some work being done to address these concerns, there will inevitably be more challenges ahead that no one company or industry can solve alone," he wrote in the op-ed.
For his part, Pichai recently backed a temporary ban of facial recognition tech while a regulatory framework is developed. The view isn't shared by all execs in the industry. Microsoft CEO Brad Smith, for example, touted the benefits of the applications - like reconnecting lost family members.
Pichai's comments follow a separate interview with the Financial Times last year in which he urged caution crafting rules too haphazardly. "Rather than rushing into it in a way that prevents innovation and research, you actually need to solve some of the difficult problems," he said at the time.
Among the areas Pichai listed as potential issues prime for new legal guidelines were safety, explainability, and fairness. Google and other tech giants like IBM have published their own frameworks to help guide the development of AI projects.
To be sure, any federal effort to regulate the technology would be extremely difficult, though some states are taking initial steps to start the conversation. A good comparison is an effort in Congress to pass new legislation governing consumer privacy and data collection that remains ongoing despite years of work on the issue.
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty
IBM is going all-in on AI and is trying to help companies tackle some of the pressing challenges surrounding the tech - like trust and transparency in the algorithms.
And while Rometty says regulation is needed, she was careful to clarify that it should be done in a targeted manner to ensure the US can remain competitive against other countries.
"Precision regulation is what I think is needed," Rometty told CNBC. "You want to have innovation flourish and you've got to balance that with security."
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff
Benioff believes AI has the potential to even more greatly divide the world and spur greater inequality among nations.
"Those who have the artificial intelligence will be smarter, will be healthier, will be richer, and of course, you've seen their warfare will be significantly more advanced," he said at last year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Those who do not have access will be "weaker and poorer, less educated and sicker."
Salesforce has a chief ethical and humane use officer who helps the software giant tackle these issues. Still, ensuring public trust in the technology remains a top job for leaders.
"We'll have two sides of a coin. One side will be positive, but we're going to create a lot of negatives and how quickly are we going to be able to react," Salesforce chief data officer Hernan Asorey previously told Business Insider.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk
Bucking the viewpoint of other top business leaders, Musk is much more cautious about the benefits of AI weighed against the potential negative consequences of the tech.
Musk previously warned that companies need to be "very careful about the advancement of AI."
"Generally, people underestimate the capability of AI," the out-spoken CEO said at a conference in Shanghai last year. "They sort of think it's like a smart human, but it's going to be much more than that. It'll be much smarter than the smartest human."
Musk has called for the federal government to study the tech for a few years and then work with industry to develop standards - though he acknowledged that is unlikely to happen.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
While many countries are rushing to advance AI, center-stage is the battle between the US and China to be viewed as a leader in adopting the tech.
Amid the race, executives, federal officials, academics, and other experts have raised concerns over how aggressively China is focusing on the tech - and whether it is using AI in an ethical manner.
Nadella believes China has the same level of commitment as the US on the issue and is advocating for a set of global standards between the world's most powerful countries.
"The United States, and China, and the European Union having a set of principles that govern what this technology can mean in our societies and the world at large is probably more in need today than it was in the last 30 years," he said in Davos this year.
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