Billionaire Warren Buffett has compared the boom in artificial intelligence technology to the invention of the atomic bomb.
Buffett, who is ranked by Forbes as the world’s sixth-richest man with a fortune of $167.2 billion, addressed the issue of the new technology at the annual shareholders meeting of his company Berkshire Hathaway in the US.
He said that while AI was unlikely to render humans obsolete, the implications of the technology spreading were massive.
“It can do all kinds of things, and when something can do all kinds of things, I get a little bit worried,” he said.
“We did invent for very, very good reason, the atom bomb. And, World War Two, it was enormously important that we did so. But is it good for the next 200 years of the world that the ability to do so has been unleashed?”
The comparison is particularly strong given Buffett has previously and on multiple occasions named a nuclear conflict as his greatest fear, telling CNBC earlier this year the thought kept him up at night.
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“With AI, it can change everything in the world, except how men think and behave, and that’s a big step to take,” Buffett said, paraphrasing a similar quote by Albert Einstein regarding the development of the nuclear bomb.
Buffett, alongside business partner Charlie Munger, spoke on a number of topics at the meeting, calling for bank regulators to find a way to punish irresponsible bank executives and board members, and calling for a peaceful relationship between China and the US.
“Everything that increases the tension between these two countries is stupid, stupid, stupid,” Munger said.
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