Reddit Co-Founder Criticises Industry For 'Tone Deaf' Explanation About AI Risks

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has called out the tech industry for being 'pretty tone deaf' in explaining the risks associated with artificial intelligence (AI) to the public. Ohanian explained that the risks associated with AI were more mundane than the "Terminator and Skynet" scenarios, where the technology sees humans as a threat and attempts to wipe them out.

Ohanian's statement comes in the backdrop of a recent string of doomsday warnings from top AI researchers, who talked about pausing he development before the technology slips beyond human control. As per Ohanian, there are risks but not as big as they have been made out.

“There are risks, I do think they're more benign, or they're more banal than people are thinking,” Ohanian was quoted as saying by CNBC.

The Reddit boss compared AI to nuclear energy, highlighting that both technologies are powerful scientific advances that can cause serious harm but also deliver major benefits if managed responsibly.

“I'm hopeful this goes in a healthy direction, and it's just going to require fewer tweets and more, like, thoughtful conversation,” Ohanian said.

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Warnings About AI

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon warned AI could kill us all by the end of the decade. Evan Hubinger, Anthropic's alignment science lead, echoed Coxon's warning, saying there was more than 10 per cent chance of such an event within the next decade.

Josh Engels, who worked on Google DeepMind's AGI safety team, has left the company and joined AI evaluation organisation METR. He said he made the move because he believes the stakes surrounding advanced AI have become too high.

The remarks show how quickly AI has advanced, from the hallucination-prone ChatGPT of 2022 towards what many see as a critical milestone: recursive self-improvement.