Were doomed - or are we?
Summary
There’s a lot of talk around the net at the moment about the perils of uncontrolled AI (by which most people currently mean Large Language Models), e.g.: • a large group of experts have signed an open letter calling for a pause in development whilst risks and regulation are explored • AI researchers such as Bender and Gebru have highlighted the the danger that GPT tools which are trained on “the internet” tend to “risk perpetuating dominant viewpoints, increasing power imbalances and further reifying inequality”. • Émile P. Torres and Timnit Gebru have coined the acronym TESCREAL to describe a set of right-wing ideologies that they see underlying the motivations of many of the people and companies driving AI research Balancing this are views that all the statements about AI being an ’extinction risk’ are too vague (with the exception of possible weaponisation) for effective action to be taken: “I am strongly in favour of being as careful as we possibly can be, and have been saying so publicly for the past ten years, it is important to maintain a sense of proportion – particularly when discussing the extinction of a species of eight billion individuals. But the first step is to name and describe them – and to be specific.” For a complete contrast, Cory Doctorow sees all of this as criti-hype — criticism that incorporates a self-serving commercial boast If AI is an existential threat to the human race, it is powerful and therefore valuable. Doctorow thinks that in reality AI is just one more step on the road to the ’enshittificaiton’ at the heart of many big-tech business models. The following areas seem useful to me at the moment: • I am using GitHub CoPilot as an aid for both personal and professional software writing • where I work, I have guided the sales team to get going with Microsoft Viva Sales within Dynamics 365 • I am occasionally playing with ChatGPT and similar to put together first drafts of things • very likely to experiment with Microsoft 365 CoPilot once it is available to us Overall my sense is it’s too soon to say.
