“We’re at an inflection point as to the ecosystem we build to leverage AI. We have to choose, now, the assumptions we build into agency and rights for individuals interacting with these systems. I’ve written about this on my site. Here are excerpts from a September 2023 post titled ‘On AI: What Should We Regulate?’:
“A platoon of companies is chasing the consumer AI pot of gold known as conversational agents – services like ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, Microsoft’s BingChat, Anthropic’s Claude and so on. Tens of billions have been poured into these upstarts in the past 18 months, and while it’s been less than a year into since ChatGPT launched, the mania over generative AI’s potential impact has yet to abate.
The conversation seems to have moved from ‘this is going to change everything’ to ‘how should we regulate it’ in record time. What I’ve found frustrating is how little attention has been paid to the fundamental, if perhaps a bit less exciting, question of what form these generative AI agents might take in our lives. Who will they work for, their corporate owners, or …us? Who controls the data they interact with – the consumer, or, as has been the case over the past 20 years – the corporate entity?
“The conversation seems to have moved from ‘this is going to change everything’ to ‘how should we regulate it’ in record time. What I’ve found frustrating is how little attention has been paid to the fundamental, if perhaps a bit less exciting, question of what form these generative AI agents might take in our lives. Who will they work for, their corporate owners, or …us? Who controls the data they interact with – the consumer, or, as has been the case over the past 20 years – the corporate entity?…
“Most leading AI executives are begging national and international regulatory bodies to quickly pass frameworks for AI regulation. I don’t think they will be up to the task. Not because I think regulators are evil or stupid or misinformed – but rather because a top-down approach to something as slippery and fast-moving as generative AI (or the internet itself) is brittle and unresponsive to facts on the ground. This top-down approach will, of course, focus on the companies involved.
“But instead of attempting to control AI through reams of impossible-to-interpret pages of regulation directed at particular companies, I humbly suggest we should focus on regulating the core resource all AI companies need to function: Our personal data.
“It’s one thing to try to regulate what platforms like Pi or ChatGPT can do, and quite another to regulate how those platforms interact with our personal data. The former approach stifles innovation, dictates product decisions and leads to regulatory capture by large organizations. The latter sets an even playing field that puts the consumer in charge.”
This essay was written in November 2023 in reply to the question: Considering likely changes due to the proliferation of AI in individuals’ lives and in social, economic and political systems, how will life have changed by 2040? This and more than 150 additional essay responses are included in the report “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence by 2040.”