Famous physicist called AI chatbots overhyped and mocked the discussion of the end of humanity

Artificial intelligence hardly poses any global threat to humanity, as AI technology is too hyped and not as effective as it is claimed to be. The real technological breakthrough will come from quantum technologies.

This was stated by the famous theoretical physicist Michio Kaku in an interview with CNN. He believes that super-popular chatbots like ChatGPT are just "overhyped tape recorders," arguing that we overestimate their capabilities vastly.

"They take human-created fragments on the internet, put them together, and pass them off as newly created," Kaku explained, noting that people somehow find this kind of AI activity not only admirable but also comparable to that of human intelligence.

He also noted that chatbots are often simply incapable of distinguishing truth from fiction, while small details in the AI database still "must be typed by humans."

This is not the first time the scientist has criticized the overly loud claims accompanying the development of chatbots.

"This is not (artificial. - Ed.) intelligence. It is, in fact, a kind of warped mirror of what has been on the Internet for the last 20 years," Kaku said earlier.

He added that chatbots are designed only to "spit things that seem plausible out."

That said, Futurism writes that many of the theoretical physicist's colleagues have been influenced by the high-profile claims of AI developers and see the risks of its development.

"I think we're not ready, we don't know what we're doing and that we're all going to die," AI theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky said in a commentary for Bloomberg.

British computer scientist and "godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton also stressed that a scenario in which AI could destroy humanity "is not something impossible."

However, Kaku considers such views to be misguided and a distraction from a very different future that is driven by quantum computing, not AI.

He notes that humanity has moved from the analog stage when computing was done "with sticks, stones, levers, gears, pulleys and ropes" to the use of microchips and transistors powered by electricity.

He believes that the next stage of evolution will start with quantum computing.

"Mother Nature would laugh at us because she doesn't use zeros and ones. Mother Nature calculates with electrons, electron waves and waves that create molecules. That's why we are now moving to the third stage," he said.

Earlier OBOZREVATEL shared what will happen when artificial intelligence reaches the singularity and whether it will be able to kill people.

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