‘AI will be used by bad actors and it will cause real damage’: Microsoft Chief Economist issues stern warning

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has left the world divided with its tremendous advantages in almost every field. At an event hosted by the Word Economic Forum, Microsoft’s Chief Economist Michael Schwarz warned against the risk of “bad actors” using AI that can cause “real damage”.  

Schwarz said, 'I’m quite confident that, yes, AI will be used by bad actors. And yes, it will cause real damage.' He added, “we have to be very careful and very vigilant to avoid that by all means possible.”

Microsoft official talks about AI threats

Schwarz emphasized that people don’t need to worry about AI replacing jobs, instead, they should be concerned about the technology falling in the wrong hands that can cause real damage. At the event, he stated, “We have to put safeguards; I think people who worry about AI taking away jobs are paranoid. I don’t think people should be worried too much about it. It’s a good thing when the AI makes us more productive. I think we should be worrying a lot more about AI being used by bad actors to cause damage.”

He also expressed his concerns about the bad actors manipulating elections with AI. He noted, “Breaking is much easier than building. Before AI could take all your jobs, it could certainly do a lot of damage in the hands of spammers, people who want to manipulate elections and so on.”

Earlier this week, “Godfather of AI”, Geoffrey Hinton, left Google and sounded an alarm about the dangers AI can cause in the future. He added that a part of him even regretted his life's work with AI. Talking about AI generative tools like ChatGPT, he said, “Right now, they’re not more intelligent than us, as far as I can tell. But I think they soon may be.”

Since AI has its effect across almost all industries, employees and policymakers are demanding a proper set of limitations to be put in place. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is one such community that is asking for it. It is asking the authorities to rein-in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in writing film and television scripts.

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Google, Microsoft, OpenAI execs to meet at the White House to discuss AI 

To start the process of setting guardrails for AI, top executives from major technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic, will meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and other high-ranking officials from the Biden administration. They will discuss pressing issues related to artificial intelligence (AI) such as privacy violations, bias, and the potential proliferation of scams and misinformation. 

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