An ex-Google employee and adviser to the Federal Trade Commission says the recent calls from Big Tech companies to limit the development of artificial intelligence are not in “good faith.”
Signal President Meredith Whittaker spoke to The Guardian about Big Tech’s insistence on developing AI tech to outpace competitors while warning against the dangers of AI. Whittaker, who is also a former Google employee and chief adviser of NYU’s AI Now Institute, is skeptical of Big Tech’s purported concerns about AI development’s impact on humanity.
She claimed that she chose not to sign the Future of Life Institute’s “Pause AI” letter or the Center for AI Safety’s “existential threat” letter and accused Big Tech companies of virtue signaling as they move forward with the technology they claim to be dangerous with no sign of slowing down.
“I don’t think they’re good faith,” Whittaker said of the hypocrisy that MRC Free Speech America has covered extensively. “These are the people who could actually pause it if they wanted to. They could unplug the data centres. They could whistleblow. These are some of the most powerful people when it comes to having the levers to actually change this, so it’s a bit like the president issuing a statement saying somebody needs to issue an executive order. It’s disingenuous.”
Whittaker said the idea that content moderation can protect the public while maintaining user privacy is “magical thinking” and that moderation is just another form of mass surveillance.
Instead of being realistic about the dangers of AI, Whittaker concluded that “AI hype” has caused politicians and tech executives to throw caution to the wind in the name of “public safety.”
“What is helping drive this, helping this seem plausible, is the AI hype. That is painting these systems as superhuman, as super capable, which leads to a sense in the public, and even among some politicians, that tech can do anything,” she said.
MRC Free Speech America reported on the fallacy. Several companies, led by OpenAI, LinkedIn parent company Microsoft and Google, continue to develop AI technology despite having company executives who are warning against it.
The OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even admitted that “significant harm” could happen in “a lot of different ways” but claimed his company solves that problem. “It's why we started the company,” he boasted.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is perhaps the most notable figure calling for more government regulation of AI development at the moment, despite the fact that he has and continues to profit from its development himself. Musk was one of the founders of OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, and recently founded his own AI company, X.AI. Tesla has also long benefitted from AI development.
“I've been pushing hard for a long time. I met with a number of senior senators and Congress, people of Congress, in the White House to advocate for AI regulation, starting with an insight committee that is formed of independent parties as well as perhaps participants from the leaders in the industry,” Musk said of his efforts in a recent interview with Thorold Barker at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Summit, calling AI a “double-edged sword.”
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