We all know the upsides of A.I. We also know the downsides--sort of--but these are being buried by the accelerating AI tsunami. The threat posed to privacy, employment, artists, sophisticated scams, false information flow, misuse by bad actors and yes, the survival of homo sapiens-these threats will not be mitigated by loose talk about "guardrails" by the nabobs creating and marketing A.I.
What can any of us do? Very little as individuals. The only chance is to muster a significant number of people applying political pressure and forcing oversight legislation.
That's why I'm starting to address this on Substack and why I've been nagging people on social media. If I've learned anything from the real evil empire that now runs America, it's that you have to keep repeating a message until people believe it's true. While they just make shit up, I vow that I will not. If you can disprove something I say, I'll retract the content and humbly beg your forgiveness.
I know it's not simple. There are ways that AI will be helpful to the culture and to each of us as individuals. I just ask that you please give the intended and unintended consequences some thought. In future posts, I'll try to keep the paranoia to a minimum, but if you ignore the dangers and in the not-to-distant-future the worst happens, don't say nobody warned you.
AI made the above with the prompt “Create a person with a small sign on their forehead that says "Chatbot."