AI Cold Feet Is Wishful Thinking
- By Lachlan Colquhoun
- April 04, 2023
Having invented it and deploying it at scale, the world seems confused about the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI).
Over the last week, for example, Elon Musk and a group of AI experts and industry executives called for a six-month pause in developing new AI systems more potent than OpenAI’s new GPT-4.
This is even though Musk himself was an early-stage investor in OpenAI, and his Tesla cars are relying on AI to take the next step to autonomous driving.
Meanwhile, former U.S. President Barack Obama was on a speaking tour in Australia, where he warned the world about how AI “in malevolent hands” could contribute to “all kinds of polarization.
“Today you can have me in just about any setting on a video, and certainly on a recording, say anything,” said Obama, referring to the potential of deep-faking.
“It’s a boon for filmmakers and special effects, but we’re already in a place now where verifying what’s true is difficult.”
Meanwhile, Musk was a signatory to a letter from the non-profit Future of Life Institute — also signed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak — which called for a pause on advanced AI development until “shared safety protocols” could be developed and implemented.
“Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth,” the letter said.
“Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us?”
Even more dramatically, the letter warns of the “loss of control of our civilization.”
Cold feet
It is an interesting point we have reached. Having developed AI to a point where it now has seemingly unstoppable momentum, humans are getting cold feet that the genie is out of the bottle.
Never mind that businesses worldwide rapidly deploy AI across many business functions and processes to drive efficiency, innovate new business models and improve the customer experience.
Now it seems that the specter of the potential downside to AI is worrying the very people who created it.
“It’s a boon for filmmakers and special effects, but we’re already in a place where verifying what’s true is difficult”
A look around other AI news last week underlines this dilemma.
In Dubai, a police conference showcased new technologies, such as a brain wave reader, to detect lies. Other products combined American investigation tools and Chinese computer vision algorithms to create new products with unparalleled surveillance powers. In an echo of the broader AI debate, these tools might help prevent awful crimes in the right hands, but in the wrong hands, the potential is scary.
While the world’s security forces were poring over new AI-enabled surveillance technology in Dubai, the U.K. Government released an AI whitepaper that illustrated the dilemma in the business sphere.
Legislation could stifle innovation
The whitepaper affirmed the U.K. Government’s commitment to “unleashing AI’s potential across the economy” and said the technology had already generated GBP3.7 billion by 2022.
There was little in the way of the moral and ethical panic from Obama and Musk’s comments. Instead, the whitepaper was bullish on AI and decried “heavy-handed legislation which could stifle innovation.”
Hailing AI as “one of the five technologies of tomorrow,” the government whitepaper backed an “adaptable” regulatory framework that empowered existing regulators to create tailored and context-specific rules.
It also outlines five principles for regulators to consider, which would foster the “safe and innovative use of AI.” They are safety, security, transparency and explainability, fairness, accountability, governance, contestability and redress.
This all sounds sensible, but the reality is that the idea of regulatory frameworks for AI is lagging well behind its development and implementation.
It’s almost certain that as Obama warned against AI’s potential evils and Elon Musk put his name to the open letter, many more AI implementations were completed, and the technology took more steps ahead.
So, while some humans worry about the impacts of AI, others are eager to implement it as fast as possible. Some implementations are harmless and benign; others are purely commercial, while others are evil and scary.
AI’s use on the Ukrainian battlefields through armies of “slaughterbots” has been well documented but perhaps not fully explored, and all that is happening as the international community continues to consult about the use of AI in the military while it is already happening. The reality is that while consultation occurs, AI enables weapons to kill people.
The development of the internet can be compared to the invention of the printing press, and the analogy can be extended to AI.
Johannes Gutenberg, who invented the printing press, was a devout Catholic and hoped that his invention would speed the spread of God’s word. Instead, it untapped a whole intellectual ferment, much of which undermined religious doctrine.
AI was invented to take the drudgery out of work and help businesses make smart decisions. Sadly, it’s also being used for a whole lot of other things.
It would seem, despite all warnings, that we’ve reached a tipping point, and there’s no going back.
Is it an exaggeration to say the world will never be the same again? Let’s just ask GPT-4, shall we?
Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and the NextGenConnectivity editor. He remains fascinated with how businesses reinvent themselves through digital technology to solve existing issues and change their entire business models. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/Andrey Suslov