AI changes everything

Mar 29 2023

The Washington Post

AI changes everything. We need new guardrails to survive it. And soon.

The New York Times

Elon Musk and Others Call for Pause on A.I., Citing ‘Profound Risks to Society’

Two more articles warning about AI. The previous ones I wrote about are here: No to Lethal AI

The basic message in all these articles seems to be: “AI will be everywhere. AI will change everything. We are not ready for it.”

This is probably true; we should regulate, build guardrails, independently audit the algorithms, and think what good and what bad can come from AI. And that is, doing this before we start using it, not just reacting after the fact, when the damage is already done.

The basic problem, that is not mentioned enough in the discussions about AI, is that AI is way more Artificial than it is Intelligent.

If AI was more Intelligent than Artificial, we would not have to worry about ethics, racism, inequality, environment, or anything else. AI would be Intelligent enough to take all these into account, and could be trusted to do the right thing.

But AI is Artificial, it says so in the name, and we are essentially talking about machines. And machines are not humans, they do not have the inherent ethics and morals that we humans have.

And because these machines are not human, and do not have our ethics and morals, we humans, who are building these machines, have to build guardrails and restraints into these machines. They will not become humans, but at least we can make them more Intelligent, and not just Artificial.