British journalist Robert Peston, who reportedly warned about the 2008 financial crisis and the emerging COVID-19 pandemic before they unfolded, has issued a stark warning about the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI), arguing that it could have far-reaching consequences for the global economy and employment.
In an interview with Radio Times while promoting his new thriller, The Kill Switch, Peston, who is ITV's political editor, said he was concerned that the huge investment pouring into AI infrastructure could fuel a global financial crisis.
"I am genuinely anxious that we're going to get a serious financial crash, globally, in the next year or two, because there is the most astonishing amount of money going into building the data centres and power plants for AI," Peston said.
“I do have a feeling of, ‘Why don’t people listen to me when I say things are about to go awfully badly wrong?’” he noted.
Pointing out how his previous forecasts were dismissed at the time, Peston told the Radio Times: "In the spring and summer of 2007 I was warning that what was happening in the banking sector was going to cause enormous harm to us all, and lots of politicians and people in the city wrote to the BBC to say I was scaremongering and needed to be closed down," he said, as reported by LADbible.
"A few years later, I’d made a ton of documentaries about China, and knew it well, and had been to Wuhan.
"So when this mysterious new virus turned up at the end of 2019, I said to anyone in government who would listen to me, 'This looks serious'."
The Kill Switch explores the dangers posed by artificial intelligence, and Peston argued that world leaders should be prioritising the issue over almost every other policy challenge.
"The thing that upsets me most is that this should be the stuff that we're all debating. This should be the stuff that our leaders should be talking about more than anything else. And they're not," he said.
