'Society Cannot Function If No One is Accountable for AI' — Jaron Lanier
Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:
'Society cannot function if no one is accountable for AI' - Jaron Lanier, the godfather of virtual reality
Whether we like it or not, we can't ignore AI. What started as a fun, gimmicky chatbot on our desktops, albeit one that could talk a bit like a human, is already taking jobs, accessing medical records, and reshaping workplaces. We are rapidly approaching the point where the practical realities of building and governing advanced AI systems must be confronted.
As the recent furor over indecent Grok-generated images on X, and the use of Meta AI smart glasses to record women without their permission for social media clicks has shown, the guardrails meant to help society cope with the deluge of AI devices and new technologies seem seriously lacking.
Even before the latest controversies around AI-generated images, one of the biggest shocks to me was the way some AI companies decided it was perfectly acceptable to train their models on copyrighted material from authors and artists without permission - and the fact that, despite a few lingering lawsuits, they appear to have faced few consequences so far.
All of this makes me wonder whether we're really ready for a world in which AI runs everything with zero accountability. Two people who have been grappling with similar questions are technologist Jaron Lanier and Dr Ben Goertzel, CEO of SingularityNET and founder of the ASI Alliance, in the next upcoming episode of The Ten Reckonings podcast. [5:17 --JE]
This new episode forms part of a series where these issues are explored in depth. According to Goertzel, "The ASI Alliance's purpose is not to present a unified position, but to create space for the world's leading thinkers to openly debate and, in doing so, help society reckon with the profound choices ahead."
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