Billionaire Twitter CEO Elon Musk sat down on Wednesday with member of Congress to have a frank discussion about potentially regulating artificial intelligence, as tons of companies scramble to incorporate these kind of systems into their operations. You know, just about every single science fiction novel and movie that deals with artificial intelligence becoming self-aware has warned us that trying to play God is never a good idea.
Instead of heeding the warning from these stories, we’re apparently using them as a playbook to bring about the destruction of the human race. Let’s hope none of these AI are named Skynet.
“Leading corporations and venture capital firms have poured considerable funds into developing AI tools meant for consumer products and internal business solutions. Musk contended on social media after his discussion with lawmakers that regulations would protect the population from possible harmful effects of the nascent technology,“ the Daily Wire said.
“That which affects safety of the public has, over time, become regulated to ensure that companies do not cut corners,” the billionaire stated during the meeting. “AI has great power to do good and evil. Better the former.”
“Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who took part in the discussion with Musk, recently unveiled possible steps to regulate AI as generative language systems such as ChatGPT induce a development race in the technology sector. The broad regulatory framework will attempt to ‘increase transparency, responsibility, and accountability’ for AI systems while ‘reducing the potential for misuse’ or promoting “misinformation and bias,'” the Daily Wire continued.
“Good news,” Musk responded after Schumer put out his outline of the framework. “AI regulation will be far more important than it may seem today.”
One of the reasons this has become such an important topic right now is due to technology firms who have been beaten about by our country’s economic upheaval since Biden took over the White House, looking at AI as something that could potentially increase demand for these systems among knowledge workers, which could provide them with a windfall.
“Microsoft, which invested billions of dollars into ChatGPT creator OpenAI, announced that the system would be incorporated into the search engine Bing and internet browser Edge, allowing users to more easily locate information. Google revealed one day earlier that Bard, an experimental conversational AI service, would soon be added to the company’s search engine,” the report said.
It then added, “Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI who has since resigned his seat on the company’s board of directors, recently signed an open letter with hundreds of other technology leaders which called for a six-month moratorium on developing AI solutions stronger than GPT-4 as the world considers possible ramifications of the technology.”
“Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the letter went on to say. “This confidence must be well justified and increase with the magnitude of a system’s potential effects.”
Personally, I’m not a fan of artificial intelligence. Period. This isn’t something we should be playing around with. The consequences of trying to create life, to essentially make ourselves God, could potentially be catastrophic.