There are online discussions amongst the pioneers of AI — Geoffrey Hinton, Andrew Ng, Yann Lecun and YoushuA Bengio — about the existential risks, also called x-risks, posed by AI. Both Hinton and Bengio are concerned about AI’s existential risks, whereas Ng and LeCun do not take this seriously.

When deep learning revolution initiated in 2012, there was unity amongst the researchers. Later, after leaving Google, Hinton was outspoken about the risks of AI. Ng did pioneer work in image recognition after co-founding Google Brain in 2011. Though he was concerned about AI risks, he felt that these were over-hyped. Lecun and Ng say tech leaders are exaggerating existential risks.

Hinton, Bengio and Lecun joined 22 other academics and experts to propose a framework for policy and governance to address the growing risks of AI.

These pioneers are not in agreement and are worried about AI risks, but that has not loosened their friendship a bit. People disagree, but still can remain friends.