Is the AI boom leading to AI doom?

Technology giants are spending hundreds of billions of dollars as they
careen towards creating Artificial Intelligence (AI), but critics warn
that computing power of such a level could lead to our demise

CAPITAL EXPENDITURE ($bn, quarterly)

2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025

100
75
50
25
0

Ironically,
almost 100,000
workers at these
companies have
been laid-off –
replaced by
AI

Meta
Google
Microsoft
Amazon

Amazon, Google, Meta
and Microsoft are set to
spend nearly $400bn on
capital expenditure in
2025 – largely to build
AI infrastructure

Mark Zuckerberg says
ASI is “now in sight”

STAGES OF AI

Narrow AI
(NAI):
Current model
– AI in infancy
and adept only at
handling specific tasks
like crunching data in
spreadsheets or writing
clear prose

Artificial
General
Intelligence
(AGI): Next
stage and point at which
AI becomes as smart as
humans – able to solve
problems that require
judgment and reasoning

Artificial
Super
Intelligence
(ASI): Will be
reached shortly after
AGI – supposed utopia
where AI will be able to
do tasks we cannot,
such as curing cancer

Naysayers, like Nobel prize-
winning physicist Geoffrey
Hinton, believe truly super-
intelligent AI could regard
humanity as competitor
and simply wipe us out

He and others argue,
why would AI obey us if it
is more intelligent than us?

CHANCE OF AI
ENDING HUMANITY

0 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Nate Soares, president
Machine Intelligence
Research Institute

95%

Sundar Pichai, Google
and Alphabet CEO

10%

Sources: Wall Street Journal, Times
Pictures: Getty Images
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