Andrew Ng, the founder of Google Brain, believes that big tech companies are misleading the public about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) leading to human extinction. He argues that this narrative is being used by lobbyists to push for legislation that would harm the open-source community. Ng mentions that there are companies that would benefit from not having to compete with open-sourced large language models. While he does not specifically comment on the risk-based regulation of AI proposed by the Labor government, he agrees that AI should be regulated. However, he believes that the current direction of regulation in many countries is not ideal and that thoughtful regulation is necessary. Ng emphasizes the importance of transparency from technology companies as a key regulation, which could have prevented the social media disaster caused by big tech in the past and can help prevent AI disasters in the future. He acknowledges that AI has caused harm, such as self-driving car accidents and stock market crashes, but cautions against implementing bad regulation just for the sake of regulation.
