Tencent boss Pony Ma vows to develop AI technologies to aid human well-being, warning of the potential for ‘huge pain’

Tencent Holdings founder and chief executive Pony Ma Huateng said the internet giant will develop artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and use them for human good, while acknowledging the potential for “huge pain”.

“Today, human beings are at the threshold of a new civilisation,” Ma wrote in a preface to Tencent’s sustainable social values report, which was published on Monday. “The new wave of technology represented by AI may promote human well-being to a new stage but could also inflict huge pain … [through] the process of radical change.”

Ma, 51, did not elaborate, but his warning about the potential negative effects of AI follows similar comments by other tech gurus. In May, hundreds of scientists and tech executives – including Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman – co-signed a statement warning that AI poses a serious threat to human beings.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war,” warned the Centre for AI Safety, a US nonprofit organisation.

To date Chinese scientists and tech executives have been less vocal in warning about the dangers of AI than their Western counterparts, as the country has been trying to catch up with the latest AI technologies. However, Ma has been promoting the idea of AI as a “technology for good” for some time.

In his preface, Ma said the AI revolution is a once-in-one-hundred years event that will change the “entire world”. “With solid underlying algorithms, computing power and data, AI including the foundational models, will be a multiplier for our business and enable us to serve users, industries and society better,” wrote Ma.