The Question of Our Time

The Question of Our Time

by Pat Rooney

“Money is a good servant but a poor master.”  -Francis Bacon

So, it would seem is artificial intelligence or AI, for short.  In recent weeks AI has been all over the news, daily really.  Is AI safe?  Not safe?  There’s a real threat of giving AI too much power, fearing that too much mastery over humanity will lead to disastrous results.  There is so much we just don’t know yet.  And on top of the safety concerns there is the run of the mill potential disruption outcomes such as lost jobs, business lines, and potentially industries.  It makes for a pretty lively discussion.

The fear factor of AI is the biggest worry it seems.  The Free Press reported recently that according to the AP poll of 64% of Americans think AI is “developing too quickly, and 80% want government regulations to keep it under human control.  Other scientists are “urging greater oversight” (Wall Street Journal) and others are scrapping newer AI leading edge models due to “safety concerns.”  In another Wall Street Journal article, open AI admitted that its next generation AI model had “misbehaved” in internal testing scenarios.  The race goes on.  No one wants to be left behind.  As The Guardian put it, “it’s a classic prisoner’s dilemma.”  Where it is in everyone’s interest to slow down “but each participant has a strong interest to defect.”  Not all are pessimistic, however.  In defense of AI, Jensen Huang CEO of Nvidia says there is “zero percent chance technology takes over the world by 2030.”  While a bit comforting, he may be conflicted as his company makes the chips powering the technology.

And then there is more practical concerns such as losing jobs and possibly the ability to think and write.  Entry level jobs are the most at risk now.  Kiplinger reports that early research that tech may be “replacing young people normally hired to do “basic business roles.”  So, these kids may not have the same track to advance in a company by “learning the ropes” so to speak.  Equally alarming is that, as The Economist notes, “outsourcing your essays or papers to Claude people may lose their habit of reasoning.”  Noting, correctly, that “writing tends to be painful” due mostly to the “pain of thinking, of crystalizing thoughts in texts.”  In short, exercising your brain.  There are other pressures.  Regarding schools, the Wall Street Journal notes “an AI tutor outperformed in class active learning processes.”  A disruptor in secondary schools and universities, AI is a real threat to traditional teaching.

And finally, there is the question of how much control to give artificial intelligence via personal assistant products like Meta’s Muse AI assistant.  Muse can go shopping for you, make reservations for dinner, hotels and the like.  And as the Wall Street Journal reports of these bots become “more useful” if the person gives it more access to their daily lives, including emails, texts, calendars and, dare I say it, bank accounts.  Access to bank accounts is particularly scary as emerging legal thinking on this subject as noted by J.P. Morgan CFO Jeremy Barnum is that customers who “share their banking credentials with AI may be responsible if the bots misuse their information or make unauthorized transactions.”

The strengths and tremendous efficiencies of AI are undeniable and are understandably propelling its growth across all business, industrial and consumer products, and thus, opening the door to all this potential disruption and concern.  How all this evolves is now being debated across the world.  A good servant or a poor master?