The camera is focused on a man sitting in a wooden interview chair. Behind him is a fluorescent turquoise screen that contrasts the plain grey clothing he is wearing.
His tone and manner of speaking are deceptively calm for the words coming out of his mouth,
“I think AI will probably, like, most likely, lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there will be great companies created with serious machine learning.”
If you are wracking your brain, trying to think of the dystopian Sci-Fi film that starts off with this scene- right before the main character is threatened with the end of the world at the hands of AI – I am sorry to tell you that this excerpt is not based on anything fictional, it is not even exaggerated. Instead, it describes an interview in 2015 with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI.
Since 2015, AI has become a part of daily life. OpenAI has launched ChatGPT 1,2,3, and 4 to immense success. AI has accelerated massively, on a small level becoming the chatting partner and daily helper of millions of people, on a deeper level causing rapid advancements in medical research and in various job sectors.
But, do we really understand the implications of AI? Particularly the implications of our future with it?
As AI progresses at an ever accelerating speed, what is the potential future we are hurtling towards?
The possibility of Sci-Fi dystopian futures have always excited the minds of writers and film-makers alike. Dystopian literature such as George Orwell’s 1984 depicts the omnipresent control of Big Brother that is managed by channels of telephones, microphones, and human surveillance. Whilst 1984 by George Orwell has been susceptible to debate over whether it is science fiction or merely a dystopian novel, in a time when AI increases the possibility of mass surveillance and thus authoritarianism, it seems impossible to navigate our future without heeding its warnings. Algorithms online are already feeding us more and more extreme and divisive ideologies to gorge on and mass surveillance becomes a distinct possibility under AI that can monitor data and employ facial and speech recognition.
Algorithms online are already feeding us more and more extreme and divisive ideologies to gorge on and mass surveillance becomes a distinct possibility under AI that can monitor data and employ facial and speech recognition.
Is the control of Big Brother so hard to imagine now? Not for citizens living under China’s Communist party which is already using AI facial recognition cameras. These cameras monitor public gatherings, with a focus on monitoring activist groups, stopping dissent or protest before it even begins. An invasion of privacy almost of The Truman Show proportions featuring a nightmarishly Orwellian mode of control.
It is not just in Orwell’s literature that we see a glimmer of our present and a vision of our possible future. It is undeniable that there could be an acceleration of climate change at the hands of AI. ChatGPT consumes an estimated 39.89 million KWH every day. A future that could be akin to that of characters in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, where clean accessible water is an increasingly scarce resource, is already a reality for an estimated 2.6 billion people worldwide.
Our shrinking attention spans as we become more and more entrenched in our online world also has echoes of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 in which books are rendered useless. After all, reading a small digestible synopsis is much more efficient, right? In Fahrenheit 451 this line of thinking culminates in books being banned – despite all of their information, their depictions of humanity, and their vital importance.
Another terrifying possibility is presented by Geoffery Hilton who is nicknamed the “godfather of AI” for his pioneering work on artificial neural networks. He described AI and its implications as “no longer science fiction” in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. In an interview on the CEO podcast, Geoffery Hilton spoke in great detail on the possibility of AI warfare. The idea of indestructibly lethal robots programmed for killing has captured the imaginations of us all since the inception of computer technology. In The Terminator, The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, to name but a few examples.
What once seemed far-fetched, no longer seems so. Countries around the world have begun investing competitively in AI weaponry which will inevitably change the nature of warfare forever.
What once seemed far-fetched, no longer seems so. Countries around the world have begun investing competitively in AI weaponry which will inevitably change the nature of warfare forever. Whilst Europe has regulations in place for strands of AI use, it also has a clause that negates any regulations for AI weaponry.
As more and more autonomous AI weapons are created, could we risk creating something that will destroy us entirely? Without proper research and regulation focused on preventing this, Hilton warns that this is a distinctly terrifying possibility. What are we willing to sacrifice for the benefits AI has brought us? Our jobs, our creativity, our safety, our planet, our future?
I think it is high time we advocated safe regulation of AI. Otherwise, our future could very well resemble the bleak dystopia of a Sci-Fi movie.
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