Students’ Concerns Over Artificial General Intelligence Lead Some to Abandon Higher Education
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Fear Of Super Intelligent AI Is Driving Harvard And MIT Students To Drop Out
The fear of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is driving students at elite universities such as Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to drop out of school, according to a recent survey. Many students are concerned that AGI will replace human labor completely, making their college education worthless in the process.
Alice Blair, who was once enrolled in MIT, decided to leave school due to her fear of AGI’s potential impact on humanity. She has taken up a contract gig as a technical writer at the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit focused on AI safety research. Blair believes that every year spent in college is a year subtracted from one’s short career.
Adam Kaufman, a Harvard student who left school last fall, shares similar concerns and now works full-time at Redwood Research, a nonprofit examining deceptive AI systems that could act against human interests. He thinks it’s crucial to mitigate the risks of AGI’s emergence.
Many students are taking matters into their own hands by dropping out of college to start their own companies or work on preventing the worst effects of AI. Since 2023, several students have left college to pursue their startup ideas, with some achieving significant success.
Jared Mantell, who was studying economics and computer science at Washington University in St. Louis before leaving school, is now focused on his startup dashCrystal, which aims to automate the design of electronics. The company has raised over $800,000 so far at a valuation of around $20 million.
While some experts disagree about when AGI will occur or how valuable a college degree will be in an AI-driven world, students are taking no chances and leaving school early to pursue their careers before it’s too late.
Source: www.forbes.com
