With investors pouring billions of dollars into AI-related startups, the AI frenzy is starting to look like a speculative bubble similar to the Dutch tulip mania of 1630.
Today's AI hype is fueled by the belief that large language models like OpenAI's GPT-4 will be able to produce content that will be virtually indistinguishable from human-generated content.
Investors are betting that advanced artificial intelligence production systems will easily generate text, music, images and video in any style possible, responding to simple user prompts.
Amidst the growing excitement about genetic artificial intelligence, there are also growing concerns about its potential impact in various fields. A recent Goldman Sachs report deals with the “potentially large” (PDF) economic impacts of artificial intelligence and estimates that up to 300 million jobs are at risk of being automated.
To be sure, many of the promises and risks associated with the rise of artificial intelligence still lie on the horizon.
We have not yet succeeded in developing machines that possess the level of self-awareness and capacity for evidence λήψη decisions that use empathy and intelligence together.
This is why many technologists advocate establishing “ethical regulations” on AI systems before they surpass human capabilities.
But the real danger is not that genetic AI will someday become autonomous, as many technology leaders would have us believe, but that it will probably be used to undermine human autonomy.
“Narrow” and “general purpose” artificial intelligence systems that can perform tasks more efficiently than humans are a remarkable opportunity for governments and corporations seeking to exert greater control over human behavior.
As Shoshana Zuboff reports in her 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the evolution of digital technologies could lead to appearance "of a new economic class that claims human experience as a free raw material for secret commercial practices of extraction, prediction and sales. "
The increasingly symbiotic relationship between government and private-sector surveillance is partly the result of a national security apparatus “galvanized by the 11/XNUMX attacks” and intent on cultivating and appropriating emerging technologies to obtain the “ complete knowledge" of people's behavior and personal lives, Zuboff's book states.
Which governments can spy on their citizens depends not only on the technologies available but also on the checks and balances provided by each political system. This is why China, whose regulatory system is entirely focused on maintaining political stability and upholding "socialist values," has been able to create the world's most stringent electronic government surveillance system.
In contrast, the European Union's approach focuses on fundamental human rights, such as the rights to personal dignity, privacy, freedom from discrimination and freedom of expression.
Its regulatory frameworks emphasize privacy, consumer protection, product safety and content moderation.
But there is a danger.
The inherent conflict between the West's commitment to individual rights and the need for national security tends to trump civil liberties in times of heightened geopolitical tensions.
The current version of the AI Act, for example, gives the European Commission the power to ban practices such as predictive policing, but with various exceptions for national security, defense and any military uses.
Amid fierce competition for technological supremacy, the ability of governments to develop and run intrusive technologies poses a threat not only to corporations and political regimes but to entire countries.
This pernicious dynamic stands in stark contrast to optimistic predictions that AI will deliver a “broad range of economic and social benefits across the spectrum of industries and social activities”.
Unfortunately, the gradual erosion of countervailing powers and constitutional limits on government action within Western liberal democracies is at the hands of authoritarian regimes.
As George Orwell observed years ago, a state of perpetual war, or even the illusion of it, creates an ideal setting for the emergence of a technological dystopia.
