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Rep. Ted Lieu is speaking my language.
“As one of just three members of Congress with a computer science degree, I am enthralled by [artificial intelligence] and excited about the incredible ways it will continue to advance society,” the California Democrat wrote Monday in an op-ed for The New York Times. “And as a member of Congress, I am freaked out by A.I., specifically A.I. that is left unchecked and unregulated.”
Frequent ReidOut Blog readers will know by now that I share the sentiment.
Check out this blog post I wrote late last year on the bias being built into artificial intelligence tools, the activists working to prevent that, and why these issues are likely to soon take center stage. And this post from last week about tech companies and the quickly approaching robot revolution.
Lieu’s article does a great job of conveying the justifiable terror in seeing our world being rapidly influenced by robots built to make fast — and sometimes, immensely consequential — decisions based on data that’s been fed to them. His op-ed, for example, begins with a paragraph that Lieu says was written by ChatGPT, a high-powered AI robot whose parent company, OpenAI, has been backed by Microsoft to the tune of several billion dollars.
Here’s the robot-written part:
Imagine a world where autonomous weapons roam the streets, decisions about your life are made by AI systems that perpetuate societal biases and hackers use AI to launch devastating cyberattacks. This dystopian future may sound like science fiction, but the truth is that without proper regulations for the development and deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI), it could become a reality. The rapid advancements in AI technology have made it clear that the time to act is now to ensure that AI is used in ways that are safe, ethical and beneficial for society. Failure to do so could lead to a future where the risks of AI far outweigh its benefits.
Creepy, huh?
You don’t have to take my word as gospel. Shoot, you don’t even have to take Lieu’s. But if you won’t listen to us on the dangers of AI, please listen to this robot!