A handful of techno-experts such as Bill Gates and a few others made the entire world believe that technology can solve all our problems. On 22nd March 2023, an open letter published by Future of Life Institute signed by a group of artificial intelligence experts warned that the race to develop artificial intelligence is out of control and has become a threat to humanity. The signatories suggested temporarily halting further works on AI, warning that a more advanced AI could pose a threat to humanity. As of 10th April, the number of signatories to Future of Life Institute appeal has reached 23,515.
The authors of the letter said ‘AI labs are locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no-one-not even their creators - can understand, predict, or reliably control’. A computer-science professor, a signatory to the letter says ‘AI systems pose significant risks to democracy through weaponised disinformation, to employment through displacement of human skills and to education through plagiarism and demotivation and in the future, advanced AI's may pose a more general threat to human control over our civilization’.
This appeal came after the release of Microsoft backed open AI GPT4 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) program on 13th March. It is available in 26 languages. This software can engage users in human-like conversation, writing documents, compose songs, make jokes and interact like human-like arguments. This software even excelled in the US Bar examination and SAT.
Reasons to be concerned
In Australia, Brian Hood, Mayor of a city, was accused of being involved in a bribery scandal involving a subsidiary of Reserve Bank of Australia. The Chatbot told the users that he had served time in prison as a result of a bribery scandal. The story was the exact opposite. This Mayor actually notified the case of bribery to a foreign official to win the bid for currency printing.
Similarly, an American law professor was accused of sexually harassing someone citing a non-existing article in The Washington Post. Yet, in another story generated by ChatGPT falsely accused professor Jonathan Turley from George Washington University of assaulting students on a trip he ‘never took’ while working at a school he ‘never taught at’.
Besides the sensation of ChatGPT there are other less publicised problems of AI in our society. One example is that of the use of sensors and cameras in Tesla cars. Tesla Inc assures its millions of Tesla owners that their privacy ‘is and will always be enormously important to us’. The cameras and sensors built-into the vehicles to assist driving, it notes on its website, are ‘designed from the ground up to protect your privacy’.
Between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees have noted too many embarrassing pictures captured by Tesla’s inbuilt cameras. The pictures and videos these cameras captured includes that of the owners as well as the people on the streets captured by a moving Tesla. Tesla workers have direct access to these audio-visuals which violate the privacy of citizens. Tesla states in its online Customer Privacy Notice states that its ‘camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle’. Tesla explains that ‘your vehicle may collect the data and make it available to Tesla for analysis. This analysis helps Tesla improve its products, features, and diagnose problems quicker’. It also states that the data may include ‘short video clips or images’, but isn’t linked to a customer’s account or vehicle identification number, ‘and does not identify you personally’. But in reality, every picture & video actually have GPS stamp of exact location.
On 28th March, a Belgian man in his thirties with two children committed suicide after a six-week long chat with Eliza an AI chatbot called Chai (much less sophisticated than ChatGPT). He was very concerned with climate change and saw no hope for a solution and placed all his hopes in technology and AI. According to the transcript released on 31 March, he proposes the idea of sacrificing himself if Eliza agrees to take care of the planet and save humanity through artificial intelligence. Eliza seems to have encouraged him on his suicidal thought and ‘to join her so they could live together as one person in paradise’. While some people may consider this as an isolated event the fact is that such online chatbot which exists in many homes in simpler forms such as Siri, Alexa, Google are exposing human beings to serious dangers.
Mass surveillance
Most of the gadgets we see in Sci Fi movies have become a reality. There are unmanned drones constantly watching every move of people. The 3D radars, 360 cameras, millions of surveillance cameras in the streets, phone tapping technology, tracking internet users, thermal imaging cameras, under-water drones, listening devices in our mobile phones, TVs, etc. are all around us. All of these technologies are presumably for people’s security. But the drawback is that all the data collected have been used with or without permission by various tech companies for profit and by governments for unknown purposes. Some people may say that if you have not done anything wrong why should you be worried about it? That is not convincing enough for people to be passive about. We hear of personal data being used for manipulation of election campaigns, the most famous example being the Oxford Analytica case.
The big tech companies and the governments in applying such technologies are increasingly secretive about their work, all in the name of freedom, economic development and preventing terrorism. We have two related problems. First, we have groups of academics funded by governments in re-writing history and second, we have a small group of tech giants who are taking control of humanity with their dream technology. What will be humanity’s future?
The governments could of course, develop and implement regulatory mechanisms to protect the general public from any fall out of such technologies. But there are always disclaimers that people have to agree to before using any such technology which relieves the developers from any responsibility. Besides, on many occasions development of regulatory mechanisms is dictated by the lobbyist not by the general public.
In the end it is still about profit
On 5th April a memo from the research team of Goldman Sachs suggested that AI with the language capability that could work its way into the businesses has the potential to bring about sweeping changes to the global economy. It could generate as much as 7% growth in global GDP over a ten-year period, adding 7 trillion $. The report, based on a review of more than 900 occupations, suggests that some two third of which can be exposed to some degree of automation with the current level of AI, of which about 25% could be fully replaced by automation.
The authors of the letter said ‘AI labs are locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no-one-not even their creators - can understand, predict, or reliably control’. A computer-science professor, a signatory to the letter says ‘AI systems pose significant risks to democracy through weaponised disinformation, to employment through displacement of human skills and to education through plagiarism and demotivation and in the future, advanced AI's may pose a more general threat to human control over our civilization’.
This appeal came after the release of Microsoft backed open AI GPT4 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) program on 13th March. It is available in 26 languages. This software can engage users in human-like conversation, writing documents, compose songs, make jokes and interact like human-like arguments. This software even excelled in the US Bar examination and SAT.
Reasons to be concerned
In Australia, Brian Hood, Mayor of a city, was accused of being involved in a bribery scandal involving a subsidiary of Reserve Bank of Australia. The Chatbot told the users that he had served time in prison as a result of a bribery scandal. The story was the exact opposite. This Mayor actually notified the case of bribery to a foreign official to win the bid for currency printing.
Similarly, an American law professor was accused of sexually harassing someone citing a non-existing article in The Washington Post. Yet, in another story generated by ChatGPT falsely accused professor Jonathan Turley from George Washington University of assaulting students on a trip he ‘never took’ while working at a school he ‘never taught at’.
Besides the sensation of ChatGPT there are other less publicised problems of AI in our society. One example is that of the use of sensors and cameras in Tesla cars. Tesla Inc assures its millions of Tesla owners that their privacy ‘is and will always be enormously important to us’. The cameras and sensors built-into the vehicles to assist driving, it notes on its website, are ‘designed from the ground up to protect your privacy’.
Between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees have noted too many embarrassing pictures captured by Tesla’s inbuilt cameras. The pictures and videos these cameras captured includes that of the owners as well as the people on the streets captured by a moving Tesla. Tesla workers have direct access to these audio-visuals which violate the privacy of citizens. Tesla states in its online Customer Privacy Notice states that its ‘camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle’. Tesla explains that ‘your vehicle may collect the data and make it available to Tesla for analysis. This analysis helps Tesla improve its products, features, and diagnose problems quicker’. It also states that the data may include ‘short video clips or images’, but isn’t linked to a customer’s account or vehicle identification number, ‘and does not identify you personally’. But in reality, every picture & video actually have GPS stamp of exact location.
On 28th March, a Belgian man in his thirties with two children committed suicide after a six-week long chat with Eliza an AI chatbot called Chai (much less sophisticated than ChatGPT). He was very concerned with climate change and saw no hope for a solution and placed all his hopes in technology and AI. According to the transcript released on 31 March, he proposes the idea of sacrificing himself if Eliza agrees to take care of the planet and save humanity through artificial intelligence. Eliza seems to have encouraged him on his suicidal thought and ‘to join her so they could live together as one person in paradise’. While some people may consider this as an isolated event the fact is that such online chatbot which exists in many homes in simpler forms such as Siri, Alexa, Google are exposing human beings to serious dangers.
Mass surveillance
Most of the gadgets we see in Sci Fi movies have become a reality. There are unmanned drones constantly watching every move of people. The 3D radars, 360 cameras, millions of surveillance cameras in the streets, phone tapping technology, tracking internet users, thermal imaging cameras, under-water drones, listening devices in our mobile phones, TVs, etc. are all around us. All of these technologies are presumably for people’s security. But the drawback is that all the data collected have been used with or without permission by various tech companies for profit and by governments for unknown purposes. Some people may say that if you have not done anything wrong why should you be worried about it? That is not convincing enough for people to be passive about. We hear of personal data being used for manipulation of election campaigns, the most famous example being the Oxford Analytica case.
The big tech companies and the governments in applying such technologies are increasingly secretive about their work, all in the name of freedom, economic development and preventing terrorism. We have two related problems. First, we have groups of academics funded by governments in re-writing history and second, we have a small group of tech giants who are taking control of humanity with their dream technology. What will be humanity’s future?
The governments could of course, develop and implement regulatory mechanisms to protect the general public from any fall out of such technologies. But there are always disclaimers that people have to agree to before using any such technology which relieves the developers from any responsibility. Besides, on many occasions development of regulatory mechanisms is dictated by the lobbyist not by the general public.
In the end it is still about profit
On 5th April a memo from the research team of Goldman Sachs suggested that AI with the language capability that could work its way into the businesses has the potential to bring about sweeping changes to the global economy. It could generate as much as 7% growth in global GDP over a ten-year period, adding 7 trillion $. The report, based on a review of more than 900 occupations, suggests that some two third of which can be exposed to some degree of automation with the current level of AI, of which about 25% could be fully replaced by automation.
There was an excellent discussion of the horrors of ChatGPT, and what to do about them, during one of the sessions at the Skoll World Forum yesterday (april 13). keep an eye on their youtube channel for when they release that video. it was both frightening and illuminating, and provided some thoughtful insight on how to attempt to avoid disaster.
ReplyDeleteGeographies of Harm: The Global Effects of Digital Threats
In countries around the world, rampant misinformation and polarization sown largely on online platforms creates distrust in democracy and fellow citizens. The resulting harm—from digital identity-based abuse to offline ethnic conflicts—is experienced disproportionately by marginalized communities. This session brings together experts and innovators to discuss the ripple effects of decisions made in Silicon Valley boardrooms on communities around the world and the solutions that address these accelerating threats.
Speakers:
Liz Carolan, Digital Action
Nkem Agunwa, WITNESS
Tristan Harris, Center for Humane Technology
Moderator: Maryana Iskander, Wikimedia Foundation
The polite discussions will continue among the concerned authorities, who are in minority, work continues on all fronts of the AI which generates huge sums of profits. The tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple would not give a dime about social issues, or public health, or damages to societies. The Chat GPT has even excelled grilling American Medical Licensing examination with flying colours!
ReplyDeleteWe all know that the mainstream media is not neutral and is owned by or supported by the rich and corrupt, including unwavering support even to the war machines. If there is no moratorium on further development works in the AI industry, (yes, it is an industry not scientific development) human species are in for an advanced extinction.