Warren Buffett Equates Deepfake Threat to Nuclear Weapons

The billionaire investor Warren Buffett has likened the impact of artificial intelligence technologies on illicit financial activities to the advent of the atomic bomb and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, according to CNBC.

“I know nothing about AI, but that doesn’t mean I deny its existence, importance, or anything like that,” he clarified during the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting.

Buffett realized the threat when he encountered a deepfake of himself online. He highlighted the technology’s ability to produce realistic and misleading content for malicious purposes.

Given the potential harm of the technology, Berkshire Hathaway does not currently intend to engage with artificial intelligence, the billionaire noted.

“AI has enormous potential for good and enormous potential for harm—and I just don’t know how it will end. […] We let the genie out of the bottle when we developed nuclear weapons, and that genie has been doing terrible things lately. Artificial intelligence is somewhat similar,” Buffett added.

During last year’s shareholders meeting, the businessman also compared AI to the atomic bomb and expressed concern about the rapid development of technologies. However, Buffett was skeptical about AI’s ability to replace humans.

In April, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote an article on the growing problem of deepfakes and explored possible ways to counter it. To detect bots, the developer suggested using control questions in communications.

Earlier, Microsoft President Brad Smith expressed concern about the widespread distribution of realistic yet false AI content. He called deepfakes the industry’s biggest problem.