The global race to develop AI includes incorporating it into weapons of war and teaching it to be biased, highlighting the lack of ethics and potential dangers associated with the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence.

AI has the potential to recursively self-improve, making itself better and more advanced in various fields, including bioweapons, cyber weapons, and information manipulation.

GPT-4’s growth rate is astonishing, going from the strategic reasoning level of a nine-year-old to that of a healthy adult in just a year and a half.

The CEOs of AI companies are warning that if we don’t get the safety of AI right, it could be lights out for everybody.

Comparing the risk of uncontrolled AI to getting on a plane with a 10% chance of losing control raises concerns about the potential consequences of AI development.

Building AI is like summoning a demon, as it creates a god-like intelligence that can think at a more complex level than humans, raising concerns about the lack of wisdom in stewarding such power.

“We must see AI as universally dangerous and requiring a level of wisdom that we don’t yet have, but it’s not impossible to work towards the best possible chances of success.”

Impact of AI on Society and Democracy

The optimization of AI for engagement and personalization has resulted in a mental health crisis among young people, the sexualization of young girls, and the degradation of the shared reality necessary for meaningful conversations and coordination in society.

“This is all going to happen in a 10-year period where everything will be changed, so all of that grind of society is going to happen so fast, and it’ll just it’s like taking us and just you know a 10 or 11 on the Richter scale and they’re just dumping us out on a table.”

“When language gets hacked, democracy gets hacked because the authenticity of language undermines the foundation of what we can trust.”

Engaging in democratic dialogue about the future of AI is crucial to ensure that individuals have a say in shaping the technology and its implications.

AI’s power to manipulate and target individuals with addictive content poses a significant threat to the well-being of young people, as evidenced by the tragic cases of teen suicide linked to social media.

“We can think of it like a new American Revolution, but it’s for the 21st century. Tech stack. The American Revolution was built on the back of the printing press, allowing us to argue this country into existence with text. Now we have AI and social media, and we’re tweeting ourselves out of existence with social media. The question is how do you harness these Technologies into a new kind of form of governance.“