AI ‘could be’ danger to society: Joe Biden

US President Joe Biden has stated that artificial intelligence (AI) "may be" dangerous, although it is still unclear how society will be impacted by the technology.

In his opening remarks to a meeting with advisers in the fields of science and technology on Tuesday, Biden stated that technology businesses have a duty to make sure their goods are secure before being released, Al Jazeera reported.

“Tech companies have a responsibility, in my view, to make sure their products are safe before making them public,” Biden said at the opening of a meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

When he was asked whether artificial intelligence was dangerous, Biden said that it “remains to be seen” but “it could be”.

According to Biden, AI could aid in the fight against diseases and climate change, but creators of the technology also need to consider "possible threats to our society, to our economy, and our national security."

The president claimed that social media's effects on young people's mental health demonstrated the damage that new technologies may cause if safety measures are not put in place.

Biden's comments come as the argument over how to govern AI is heating up, with some well-known voices advocating for a halt to the technology's advancement until safety measures can be put in place.

Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, and Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, among others, asked for a hold on the adoption of AI in an open letter that was released last month owing to the "deep hazards to society and mankind" posed by the technology.

The letter was in response to GPT-4, the successor to the ground-breaking AI chatbot ChatGPT, being released.

The newer platform, according to GPT-4's California-based developer OpenAI, is capable of "human-level performance" in specific situations, such as passing the bar exam with a score in the top 10% of candidates.