In summary
The resignation of Anthropic researcher over his concerns about artificial intelligence companies “gambling with our lives” led to a discussion about the technology’s risk at California’s largest pension fund.
California pension funds are doing well this year in no small part because of the still-booming stock market and stratospheric valuations of artificial intelligence companies.
But an unsettling question emerged at this week’s board meeting for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System: What if the new technology leads to catastrophe?
“This is humanity,” board President Theresa Taylor said Monday during a discussion with CalPERS Chief Investment Officer Stephen Gilmore.
Taylor centered her remarks on the public resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who wrote on social media that leading AI companies could endanger human life by the end of this decade.
Coxon previously worked for OpenAI. He wrote that Anthropic and OpenAI are “gambling with our lives” as they race to create a superintelligence.
After Coxon’s statement, Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei and OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman called for a slowdown in AI research.
Taylor, a retired state worker and former public employee union leader, urged her colleagues on the CalPERS board to consider issuing a public statement calling for new guardrails or a moratorium on AI development.
The board is obligated to prioritize the financial health of the pension fund. She argued a statement about AI concerns is appropriate because, “If we don’t have retirees, if we don’t have state workers because of AI, we don’t have a pension fund.”
CalPERS, with assets valued at $655 billion, is among the world’s largest pension funds.
The board did not issue a statement or turn the dial on its AI investments this week. Gilmore said the future holds a “very wide distribution of possible outcomes” for what could occur with AI.
Taylor replied, “We’re waiting for the money and unfortunately the outcome could be something entirely different.”
