KATE THOMPSON DAVY: Stop farming out all the good stuff to AI and keep a little joy for the human spirit

Can you caution against the perils of rampant artificial intelligence (AI) development and still be excited about the probable uses? Judging from the tech pages of my favourite news sites and endless chatter on social platforms, the question of the moment seems to be whether the growing anti-AI sentiment is also anti-progress. 

Debate about the risks of AI has been the natural, instinctive flipside to every discussion about its potential. Long before we had anything resembling functioning AI we worried about what it would cost us, and how soon Clippy (remember him?) would morph into our fearsome technological overlord.

But for all the hand-wringing, we seemed to have skipped making a coherent plan or even, some argue, identifying the correct threats. As Oxford Internet Institute professors Brent Mittelstadt and Sandra Wachter recently wrote: “What is worrying is that dwelling on imagined future catastrophes diverts attention from real ethical dangers posed now by AI,” including bias and discrimination, misinformation and environmental impact.

We (humans) do seem to be amazingly good at not addressing those slow, difficult concerns in any sphere — just ask your local diversity and inclusion researcher or climate scientist. So it is not just in the case of AI that we have fought any enemy but the essential ones.

And partly, I dare argue, that is because we mostly look to Big Men to tell us what to care about. For clarity (and to skip the inevitable misandry accusations), Big Men are not always men, but rather someone of wealth and power — politicians, business leaders and their ilk. Right now, the Big Men are concerned about one AI tool outpacing the others, dominance and competition.

In late March an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of AI tools “more powerful than GPT-4” was published by a nonprofit called The Future of Life Institute. Billionaire Elon Musk was the star name backing the letter (and, incidentally, a major funder of the institute), but he was far from the only one. Other signatories included Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp, and some of the head honchos at companies making tools that compete with GPT-4, like Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque. Big Men.

“Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilisation?”, they implored. “Such decisions must not be delegated to the unelected tech leaders,” said the letter signed by other unelected tech leaders.

Naturally, this document was the subject of much scrutiny and discussion, but the tide seemed to turn against the pen pals swiftly as the researchers whose work was used in the letter sought to distance themselves from it, and several prominent signatories walked back their support.

As Vice’s contemporaneous article headline said: “The open letter to stop ‘dangerous’ AI race is a huge mess.” And the article continues: “...Some notable signatories turned out to be fake, and many more AI researchers and experts vocally disagreed with the letter’s proposal and approach.”

Some of the faked signatories later removed from the list included Chinese President Xi Jinping (LOL, imagine!), Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. When the dust settled, I was left with the same feeling of unease I’d experienced after “The Twitter Files”.

That was the late 2022 fiasco in which Twitter’s new owner, Musk, seeded a wealth of internal emails to a friendly writer, Matt Taibbi. The latter then published a transparent attempt to position the in-house discussions therein as gotchas demonstrating that Twitter staff were censoring tweets, and by implication justifying Musk’s vintage claims of acquiring the platform to safeguard free speech.

Instead, all that was clear from the lukewarm revelations of the “Files” was that Twitter employees were having tedious but necessary discussions about fake news and limiting harm. As they should be. Instead of launching a public outcry, the whole Twitter Files thing cost a once-respected journalist his reputation but otherwise fell flat, as it was evidently rank with manipulation.

The open letter debacle felt just as directed, even if it does point towards some areas of real concern that one — many ones, inside and outside the industry — might have with the pace and direction of AI development. But transparent outrage fishing really undermines legitimacy ... much like Taibbi may experience when pitching his next big project to anyone with an ounce of integrity.

Fruit of the poisoned tweet and all that. Instead of Big Men, I wonder if we should be listening instead to the Little Guys, like the unionised writers of Hollywood asking for policies to limit them being replaced by AI tools that spit out generic scripts based on all the pre-existing scripts those same unionised writers have written over the years.

Or the independent designers and artists who, against the odds, have carved out a living and niche for themselves but now find their work is being scrapped without permission by the machine that actively devalues them and their talents.

I don’t personally fear an AI-led future where smart machines reduce the mental and physical load. Rather, one encapsulated by this tweet, which graced my timeline this morning. Sometimes, still, Twitter really delivers just what you need. @KarlreMarks tweeted: “Humans doing the hard jobs on minimum wage while the robots write poetry and paint is not the future I wanted.”

• Thompson Davy, a freelance journalist, is an impactAFRICA fellow and WanaData member.