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Warren Buffett admittedly isn’t an expert on artificial intelligence — but what he does know makes him nervous.
Speaking at a question-and-answer session at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders conference Saturday, Buffett likened the advent of AI to his views on nuclear weapons. The Berkshire CEO referenced his remarks from the previous year’s conference, recalling that he had described the atomic bomb as a genie let out of the bottom that “has been doing some terrible things” and “scares the hell out of” him.
“AI is somewhat similar, it’s part way out of the bottle, and it’s enormously important and it’s gonna be done by somebody,” Buffet said Saturday. “We may wish we’d never seen that genie, or it may do wonderful things.”
While he said he’s not very familiar with the technology, he had one experience that made him “a little nervous” about AI: He stumbled across a video using his likeness generated by AI, “delivering a message that in no way” came from him. He worried that that could open the floodgates for potential scams, calling it “the growth industry of all time.”
“I do think, as someone who doesn’t understand a damn thing about about it, that it has enormous potential for good, and enormous potential for harm,” he said. “And I just don’t know how that plays out.”
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The highly anticipated and closely watch annual conference, dubbed “Woodstock for Capitalists” by its fans, kicked off Friday in Buffett’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.
Shareholders wait all year for a chance to hear directly from the 93-year-old Buffett, known as the Oracle of Omaha. He was joined on the panel by vice chairs Ajit Jain and Greg Abel.
Before the conference, Berkshire reported a record cash and Treasuries pile of $189 billion — a 13% increase in just three months — and a 39% year-over-year surge in operating profits to $11.22 billion.