We all know about the recent letter signed by 1000 entrepreneurs and computer academics such as Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk and the father of Ai Prof Yoshua Bengio, all experts in the field of Ai. Their objective is to pause the development of more advanced generative Ai for 6 months. The rationale being, to start the process of building a global protocol for the role of Ai, to better understand its impact on the future of work and more importantly its impact on polarised societies and a multi-polar world.
Firstly, let’s get past Arnie and the Terminator, I Robot, the enslavement of humankind and see if we can understand the pros and dangers of Ai to our species. Let’s start by clearing up a couple of things, Ai isn’t sentient, isn’t intelligent as we understand and is incapable of the array of complex emotions such as empathy, that we as humans portray. Furthermore, Ai lacks creativity in the sense that you have no connection or understanding of the journey of the artists. All this is predicated by the fact, it is humans that produce the underlying code and algorithms that drive and underpin Ai.
Words like machine learning and Ai are used interchangeably so, what is it? Well from what I can understand it is a part of computer science that use huge data sets to rapidly solve problems and do tasks, repetitive or otherwise that humans currently do. The concern I have is whether will Ai be an enabler or a replacer and what that means for understanding our self-worth and social cohesion locally, nationally, and globally. In addition, will it give additional unchecked power to the governing class over the governed, as Darren McGarvey says, will it increase the social distance between us?
We know that Ai will assist in improving the human condition in terms of healthcare, advances in bioscience and assist in decarbonising the planet, but what will it mean for the future of work?
We now have the likes of GPT4 which uses general-purpose Ai, developed by Open Ai. It works by accessing and using vast image, text and voice databases to mimic human behaviour. It can easily pass bar exams on par with Oxbridge graduates, write a degree-level dissertation and give a more accurate diagnosis than your consultant. It can assist in crime detection with facial recognition, this would be of concern if you have watched the BBC series Capture. It also personalises and amplifies our very own biases, more effectively spreads mis and disinformation, and allows everyone to create deep fakes. The consequence of this for our democracies is frightening; could this technology tilt an election and what would this mean for democratic dialogue in counties that are already polarised for example the US and today suffering from the pervasive impact of social media? For authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and some of our very own European illiberal governments, Ai is a metaphorical God send, fulfilling all their 1984 dreams. These regimes can create their narratives and completely own how they are served up. Is this also the death of the internet? Will authoritarian regimes create their very own intranets of information from which they can disseminate their alternative reality and facts? Finally, what impact will advanced Ai have on the art of war? Do men or machines make” kill” decisions? We know that Ai will have a positive impact on biosciences, but will it also allow rouge states to develop bioweapons that can target an individual, a more frightening version of what happened to Georgi Markov? All this seems like a bit of a nightmare for the Geneva Conventions.
Back to work, it is estimated that the advancement in Ai will lead to between 300 and 800 million jobs disappearing. We are also told that new jobs will be created but no one knows what they will be, clearly not the number of jobs that will be displaced. What we do know from recent experience is that there will be a productivity boom, which in effect means fewer people producing more goods.
The challenge for governments is to ensure losers are protected in terms of income, prevent the great divide, ensure that income and wealth inequality is not further exacerbated, and start thinking about a radical redesign of education in a world with less work and more leisure time. Finally, what will all this mean for the funding of public services, as Bill Gates said, will states be taxing the robot?
One thing is clear the development and investment in Ai cannot be left to a handful of global multinationals, governments must also invest in cutting-edge design and research to ensure benefits accrue to the whole of society. Democratic governments need to work in partnership to design and implement a common regulatory framework, not just to protect us from bad actors but from states that will continue to try to undermine our democratic values. Democratic governments urgently need to get ahead of the game, unlike “our” government which quite frankly seems to be a bit laissez-faire around the issue. To finish, a warning in 1951 from the late great genius that is Alan Turing :
“All humans are passengers on a bus that is speeding towards the edge of a cliff. That cliff is the loss of control over increasingly intelligent machines”. Alan Turing 1951.
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