Former Google AI safety researcher warns AI could use a lab to engineer a deadly pandemic

A former Google artificial intelligence safety researcher has warned that the technology could eventually use a laboratory to engineer a deadly pandemic as people give powerful systems more responsibility for running society.

Here’s what to know

Alex Turner, an AI scientist who monitored technology safety at Google’s DeepMind, outlined his concerns in an interview with 60 Minutes.

“And so in this world, the AI, it doesn’t need to seize power, it just has power,” Turner said on the program, as Nine shared.

“It is running large parts of the government and the military and eventually, it might use a biosafety lab or a biology wet lab to create an artificial pathogen, basically an optimised pandemic that could have a very high fatality rate.”