Warren Buffet’s Views on Artificial Intelligence: Not Just Positives

Warren Buffett’s Caution on Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence represents one of the greatest technological revolutions of our time, not only for the promise it carries of transforming, or rather revolutionizing, multiple industrial sectors and people’s daily lives.
While some see AI as a huge opportunity for innovation and progress, others express concerns about its ethical, social, and economic implications.

Among those who have adopted a cautious stance towards AI stands out Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and a well-known billionaire investor.
During Berkshire’s annual shareholder meeting, Buffett discussed his views on the impact of AI on the world of work and beyond.

Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, seems not inclined to add AI-related actions to his investment portfolio in the near future.
During Berkshire’s annual meeting last Saturday, Buffett responded to a question about the impact of AI on traditional industries, saying that he knows nothing about the technology, but that “it doesn’t mean I deny its existence or importance or anything like that.” One of the AI applications that negatively struck the investor is its potential use for fraudsters.

“When you think about the potential to defraud people…
if I were interested in engaging in fraud, it would be the growth industry of all time and it’s enabled, in a sense,” he said.

Buffett shared an experience where he encountered an AI-generated version of himself online:

“I saw an image in front of my eyes on the screen, and it was me, and it was my voice.
And wearing the kind of clothes I wear, my wife or my daughter wouldn’t be able to notice any difference.
And it was conveying a message that in no way came from me.”

Buffett reiterated the warning from the Federal Trade Commission and others to consumers: the huge potential for malicious actors to use deepfake technology and voice cloning.
“Based on what I’ve seen lately, I would have pretty much sent money to myself in some crazy country,” Buffett joked.

Buffett, being a capitalist, understands that AI could be a world-changing technology, a technology that could be used for good or for bad.
He compared AI to the development of nuclear weapons, a technology he describes as a “genie” because it is powerful, capable of changing the world, and unable to go back into the bottle it came from.
“AI is partly like that.
It’s partly out of the bottle and it’s hugely important, and it will be achieved by someone,” he explained.
“We might wish we had never seen that genie, or it might do wonderful things.”

The future of artificial intelligence will therefore depend on how those in power choose to use it.
“I have no advice on how the world should handle it, because I don’t think we know how to handle what we’ve done with the nuclear genie,” he continued.
“But I think that, as someone who doesn’t understand a damn thing about it, it has enormous potential for good and enormous potential for bad.
And I just don’t know how it’s going to end,” he concluded.

Warren Buffett thus shows a logical concern regarding artificial intelligence, not for the technology itself, but more for its future implications.