Most technology presents both risks and benefits. Trying to slow a technology before either risks or benefits are fully understood looks like a fool’s’ errand, especially when governments are the fools. It most likely would just stifle the technology’s development. From Mike Whitney at unz.com:
More and more people are beginning to realize that Artificial Intelligence is a high-risk technology that could lead to the extermination of the species. That may sound like an exaggeration, but if you follow the developments in AI closely, you’ll see that it’s an accurate assessment. AI is a potentially lethal technology that can either be used to benefit mankind or pave the way to unimaginable death and destruction. Check out this excerpt from an article at Scientific American:
A 2023 survey of AI experts found that 36 percent fear that AI development may result in a “nuclear-level catastrophe.” Almost 28,000 people have signed on to an open letter written by the Future of Life Institute, including Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, the CEOs of several AI companies and many other prominent technologists, asking for a six-month pause or a moratorium on new advanced AI development….
Why are we all so concerned? In short: AI development is going way too fast. Here’s Why AI May Be Extremely Dangerous—Whether It’s Conscious or Not, Scientific American
Elon Musk has used his platform at X to amplify his concerns about AI and to emphasize the need to proceed with caution in order to minimize the risks. Regrettably, Musk’s concerns have been lost on the Trump administration who see AI as the weapon they need to maintain America’s dominant position in the world order. The conflict that is brewing between Trump and Musk on this key issue has not yet exploded into public view, but we can be reasonably certain that the clash will take place sometime in the near future. If we consider, for example, Vice President JD Vance’s alarming speech at the AI Summit in France this week, in which the VP flatly rejected the push for prudent regulation or government oversight while characterizing people who take such concerns seriously as “too self-conscious and too risk averse”, then we don’t need to wonder what the administration’s approach will be. In fact, Vance summed it up for his audience in one shocking sentence: “The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety…”
Vance and Musk are both Thiel men?
Wiping out a good chunk of humanity might be a feature to them.
I always get a kick out of garbage in garbage out Techno Triumphalism rose colored lenses.
The let’s do something about human stupidity first meme comes to mind and I hated memes in the beginning.
Breaking from Man Or Astroman:
Interstellar Overdrive