Warren Buffett, the 93-year-old cofounder, chairman, and CEO of Berkshire Hathway, voiced his concerns about AI at his annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, NB, on May 4. His opinion? He is very worried. But not everyone shares Buffet’s sentiments.
Looming Danger
“We let a genie out of the bottle when we developed nuclear weapons,” he said Saturday. “AI is somewhat similar — it’s part way out of the bottle.”
After a recent tech demonstration that replicated his likeness, down to his voice, Buffett admitted that he knows little about what goes on in the background of AI, but he ‘fears the repercussions’. The tech demonstration that he witnessed was reportedly convincing enough that it fooled his own family.
“I saw an image in front of my eyes on the screen, and it was me, and it was my voice,” he said. “And wearing the kind of clothes I wear, and my wife or my daughter wouldn’t have been able to detect any difference. And it was delivering a message that no way came from me.”
Productivity on the rise
Despite Buffett’s renown as the ‘Oracle of Omaha’, AI is quickly becoming the rumored reason behind an upscale in productivity in the last several months.
IBM’s Vice Chair and Former Head of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, recently said in an interview that AI adoption is quickly happening, and productivity gains are also happening, albeit slowly.
“Every company is looking at AI and deciding where it will help them,” he said during a recent interview on CNBC’s “Money Movers.”
“This is an evolution; we are going to evolve into this in the productivity game, and it is going to feed through the economy slowly,” Cohn said. But he added, “I don’t think we’ve seen the real productivity boost from AI.”
DC on ai
Recently, the House leaders launched a bipartisan task force on AI to explore how Congress can help the U.S. be a leader in ‘AI Innovation’.
Back in February, Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, each appointed 12 representatives to a task force to study the increased effect of AI in politics and more.
“Because advancements in artificial intelligence have the potential to rapidly transform our economy and our society, it is important for Congress to work in a bipartisan manner to understand and plan for both the promises and the complexities of this transformative technology,” Johnson said in a statement.
“As we look to the future, Congress must continue to encourage innovation and maintain our country’s competitive edge, protect our national security, and carefully consider what guardrails may be needed to ensure the development of safe and trustworthy technology.”
“Congress has a responsibility to facilitate the promising breakthroughs that artificial intelligence can bring to fruition and ensure that everyday Americans benefit from these advancements in an equitable manner,” Jeffries said.
Growth for good and evil
“If I was interested in investing in scamming, it’s going to be the growth industry of all time,” Buffet told the crowd.
According to a release from Clara Analytics, Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies announced that it had selected the company, which claims to be the leading provider of AI technology in the commercial insurance industry, “in order to advance its workers’ compensation claims operations”.
According to Buffett, the future of AI will come down to the way that those in power use it. As a capitalist, he understands that AI is a tool that could be world-changing – one that could be used for good or ill.
“I don’t have any advice on how the world handles it, because I don’t think we know how to handle what we did with the nuclear genie,” he said. “But I do think, as someone who doesn’t understand a damn thing about it, that it has enormous potential for good and enormous potential for harm. And I just don’t know how that plays out.”
