Over the last several years, we have heard a lot about the doomsday scenarios of artificial intelligence (AI). Tech giants have told us all about how AI will take control away from society, steal our jobs, allow bad actors to design dangerous pathogens or cause a catastrophic cyberattack or destroy our financial systems.
The reality is: It’s all fearmongering. I have worked in this industry for more than 20 years and have seen firsthand how important AI is to the future. Let me break it down and explain why this emerging technology is simply a tool.
Just think about it like this: AI is just like the internet, the beepers your parents had back in the day, your cellphone, Apple Watch or any other major technological advancement over the last 50 years. It’s not inherently evil by any means; it’s actually an amazing step forward for our generation. AI is not setting out to take our jobs or steal our data or any of the other fears that have been propagated by pop culture about “man vs. machine.”
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The problem with AI isn’t the technology itself, it’s what happens when individuals utilize these tools for nefarious purposes.
Let’s make something abundantly clear: AI models, even those that have errantly hacked government websites or escaped their sandboxes, have humans involved throughout every stage of development. To protect Americans, and the world by extension, from these bad actors, we need to get a better handle on how humans engage with AI.
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Think about it this way: The internet has given us nearly unrestricted access to the rest of the world, revolutionized the way we work and created opportunities for engagement we’ve never before seen. It has also given criminals, terrorists and evil people more ways to collaborate, plan and beat the system. I think the vast majority of people would say that the rapid growth of the internet has been an overwhelmingly positive societal development. AI is growing in much the same way.
How can we improve the ways in which humans train and interact with AI models? First and foremost, AI lacks a moral compass. It cannot weigh moral dilemmas, so the humans involved in training need to apply strong “constitutions” to ensure compliance with the moral standards we want to see.
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AI large language models, like the ones that have become household names across the globe, are trained to give “probabilistic” responses to your queries – in short, meaning they are giving the answer they believe is the answer that you, the user, most likely want. In many cases, that creates frequent hallucinations, industry jargon for false information. Human users and governance provide a necessary check – another reason why we need humans to verify facts and check sources.
So, rather than asking ourselves whether AI is good or evil, beneficial or harmful, we should be asking ourselves: Who is training AI models and for what purposes? What capabilities might AI have as we look into the future, or how will AI shape the future over the next decade?
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As humans, we can responsibly continue developing AI models and encourage others to have faith in the system. But first, we have to stop the fearmongering and recognize the tremendous benefits AI brings to numerous industries and sectors of society, and the impact it will have on the future of industries like healthcare, finance and manufacturing.
Growing up, I remember my elementary school math teacher saying math was important because you’re not going to carry a calculator in the grocery store, gas station or department store. Just a couple decades later, every single person carries a calculator on their phone.
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Similarly, AI is another tool in our toolkit we can reach for when we need an extra set of hands, to speed things up or to help simplify work. AI is not a tool that is intended to take our jobs away or take control of our lives; we are constantly developing new AI models with the help of humans to simplify things in the future.
As AI continues to develop, and humans create more AI models, I hope that our future can fully grasp the tremendous benefits of AI and close the door to fearmongering once and for all.