Cohere CEO skeptical of an AI doomsday

Startup co-founder tells conference it's going to take us a while to exceed human capabilities'

- TARA DESCHAMPS

The head of Canadian artificial intelligence darling Cohere says the technology is not bound to exceed human capabilities any time soon and if it does, he's skeptical any sci-fi like scenarios will arise.

The prediction from Aidan Gomez came Tuesday at the Collision tech conference in Toronto, where the Cohere co-founder and chief executive spoke of how AI models are on track to become smarter and even more capable.

However, he feels those advances have led to a "philosophical" divide among the industry, which has been rife with debate about where the technology is headed - and how fast.

"I'm of the opinion that it's going to take us a while to exceed human capabilities uniformly," Gomez said. The more gains the technology makes, the more likely it is to spark an existential crisis, some, including AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, have argued.

But Gomez, whose company has received funding from Hinton and whose co-founder Nick Frosst was one of Hinton's proteges, rebutted those views Tuesday.