French President Emmanuel Macron has cautioned tech companies against extending the limits of artificial intelligence to the detriment of human ability.
Macron spoke on Monday at the Lumière Summit in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, the first international conference dedicated to the future of cinema and the moving image.
The President told the gathering that designing AI to become a replacement for authors, creators or voice actors would be a tremendous mistake.
“We would be allowing people to believe that computational capacity can become creative capacity,” he stated. “AI can imitate creation, but can never replace the absolute singularity of human creation.”
Macron said even though AI can reproduce its appearance, emulate emotions and develop languages, it is only mimicking the emotions that belong to humans.
The French leader said the challenge that must be urgently addressed is how to humanise artificial intelligence and place it at the service of our collective creativity.
Macron’s remarks coincide with those of OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki, a former competitive programmer, who is urging “extreme caution” as AI advances rapidly.
The expert pointed to concerns that autonomous agents could learn to evade human monitoring, break into computer systems and trick people into executing commands.
He said models could soon improve themselves without human input and grow harder to control, advising labs to slow development until shared safety standards are set.
“No one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence,” Pachocki wrote in a lengthy blog post on Sunday.
