Joe Biden has a secret weapon
Artificial Intelligence, the Snow Crash, and the Risks of Large Language Models: A UK Government Addressed at Bletchley Park
The British government held a summit at the historic World War II code breaking site, Bletchley Park, to announce a declaration that called for international collaboration to define and explore the risks of the development of large language models of artificial intelligence.
The Summit paid homage to Alan Turing, the British mathematician who helped the Allies break Nazi codes during the Second World War and who was also the creator of early computing devices. (A previous UK government apologized in 2009 for the way Turing was prosecuted for being gay in 1952.)
When a senior is kicked off of his healthcare plan because of a faulty artificial intelligence algorithm, is it not an issue for him? “When a woman is threatened by an abusive partner with explicit deepfake photographs, is that not existential for her?”
Science fiction, for decades, has been about predicting the future—and warning against it. The Snow Crash warned of the dangers of the metaverse even though Star Trek imagined the wonders of flip phones.
Is The Entity the Good, the Bad, the Ugly? Artificial Intelligence Hot Topics: The Biden Order, Dead Reckoning, and the U.S. Climate Denier
You can’t fault Biden’s order for a lack of breadth. If you make a vow to come up with solutions later, most artificial intelligence hot buttons are dealt with. That is how it deals with the tricky issues of generative AI and copyright. In the grand scheme of things, this commitment to mobilize government bureaucracy to grapple with all the worrisome aspect of a new class of technology is amazing. In paragraph after subparagraph, the White House orders up complicated multi-agency studies, each one involving deep interaction with industry and consultation with experts. bureaucrats are assigned to produce complicated reports, like some order DoorDash meals.
WIRED referred to Dead Reckoning as the perfect artificial intelligence panic movie. The Entity becomes fully sentient and threatens to use its intelligence to control a military power all over the world. It is, as Marah Eakin wrote for WIRED earlier this year, the ideal “paranoia litmus test”—when something rises to the level of Big Bad in a summer blockbuster, you know it’s the thing people are most freaked out by right now. For someone like President Biden, aware of the AI brinkmanship happening the world over, The Entity must seem horrifying. Did no one watch the movie?
As ChatGPT’s first birthday approaches, presents are rolling in for the large language model that rocked the world. President joe Biden has an executive order on safe, secure and trustworthy development and use of artificial intelligence. UK prime minister Rishi Sunak threw a party with an extinction-of- the-human-race theme, which was wrapped up with an international agreement promising international cooperation to develop artificial intelligence. Happy birthday!
Before anyone gets too excited, let’s remember that it has been over half a century since credible studies predicted disastrous climate change. The international order has not done enough to address the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the fact that the water is lapping at our feet. The United States has just installed a climate denier as the second in line to the presidency. Will the regulation of artificial intelligence progress any better?
The document lacks legal support for the regulations and mandates that may result from the plan, and it’s not certain if the Congress will approve a regulation of its own. (Although, don’t hold your breath, as a government shutdown looms.) Big powers had a lot to do with the initiative which depends on self-regulation by the industry that is under examination.
