Biden Warns of AI’s ‘Profound Risks’ in UN General Assembly Speech

President Joe Biden on Tuesday warned world leaders of the profound dangers stemming from the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
“We’ll see more technological change, I argue, in the next two to 10 years [than] we have in the last 50 years,” Biden said.
“Artificial intelligence is going to change our ways of life, our ways of work, and our ways of war,” he added.
Biden’s warning comes at a time of heightened international tension, with wars raging in eastern Europe and the Middle East and threatening to erupt in the Indo-Pacific.
He warned of AI’s use in creating “profound risks, from deepfakes to disinformation to novel pathogens to bioweapons.”
What’s more, authoritarian countries such as China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia have all sought to leverage AI to augment their efforts to destabilize the United States and its allies in the cyber realm.
The technology is also being deployed at a never-before-seen scale by militaries around the world. Both China and the United States are seeking to deploy AI, automation, and robotics across their militaries.
Domestically, it is widely believed that AI will also destroy white-collar jobs on a scale never seen before.
Still, Biden said that the threats posed by AI now are likely only “the tip of the iceberg” of what’s to come, but that “nothing is certain.”
To prepare for the mass disruptions to societies and economies the world over, he said, nations must act “to ensure AI safety, security, and trustworthiness” and “ensure that AI supports, rather than undermines, the core principles that human life has value and all humans deserve dignity.”
“As AI grows more powerful, it … must grow more responsive to our collective needs and values,” Biden said.
“We must make certain that the awesome capabilities of AI will be used to uplift and empower everyday people, not to give dictators more powerful shackles on the human spirit.”