AI is the 'biggest challenge of our times' and humanity could be replaced by machines in 5 years, Henry Kissinger says

• Henry Kissinger described artificial intelligence as the "biggest challenge of our times."
• Machines, Kissinger said, could replace humans in the next five years.

Henry Kissinger described artificial intelligence as the "biggest challenge of our times," predicting that humanity could be replaced by machines in the next five years.

The former top diplomat made the comments to Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer. A video of the conversation was published by Welt TV, part of Germany's Die Welt newspaper.

Axel Springer is the parent company of both Insider and Die Welt.

Since the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November 2022, the potential of AI has loomed large, threatening to replace humans in some jobs, particularly white-collar ones, Insider previously reported.

Jobs in technology, media, law, market research analysis, education, trade, graphic design, accounting, and customer service are among those most at risk of being replaced by AI, experts previously told Insider.

Kissinger, who is 100, said he was concerned AI could become so powerful in the long run that it leads to the sci-fi-esque outcome of humans serving machines — not the other way around.

"I think it can be avoided, but only by understanding the essence of this intelligence, which will also be able to generate its own point of view," he said.

Kissinger co-wrote a book on artificial intelligence, "The Age of AI and Our Human Future," in which he, along with former Google CEO Eric Schmitt and computer scientist Daniel Huttenlocher, explored how AI may change our relationships with knowledge, politics, and society.

He is in the process of writing a second book on the topic.

Whether AI will replace humans, he says, is the "question of our lifetime."

"It's the big challenge of our future, and on that level, it's in the interest of China and other advanced countries and eventually all countries to join it because otherwise they're in the hands of machinery that they don't understand," he said.

Kissinger's main fear is generative AI — algorithms, like ChatGPT's, that create content from simple prompts and context — and the process by which it acquires and generates knowledge.

"Once these machines can communicate with each other, which will certainly happen within five years, then it becomes almost a species problem of whether the human species can retain its individuality in the face of this competition," he said.

Kissinger said he has begun trying to bring well-intentioned scientists together in order to advance the causes of freedom and coexistence in the world.

"It must be done," he said, adding: "It isn't being done because it [artificial intelligence] is not understood yet."