“Existential” threats to humanity posed by AI have been acknowledged by Sunak’s government as a white paper from March is claimed to already be out of date. But what is this update to regulations all about?
What’s the paper about?
The paper, published on 29 March, titled “AI regulation: A pro-innovation approach” acknowledges the benefits of AI while simultaneously presenting the challenges and risks that will come with the developing technology.
Some of the benefits of AI mentioned in the paper include improving healthcare, mitigating climate change, and enhancing transport systems. It also highlighted risks like how AI can infringe on our privacy, undermine our human rights, and cause physical harm if AI-powered vehicles go rogue.
Summarily, the white paper describes that the UK wants to maximise the benefits of AI to attract investment in the industry and serve the creation of high-skilled AI jobs in, this, God’s glorious country.
How is it already out of date?
Rishi Sunak and Chloe Smith met the chief executives of Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Antrhopic AI on Wednesday evening where they discussed safety measures and ways to manage the risks of AI.
They discussed other risks, such as disinformation and national security, noting the “existential threats” such as technology could pose.
Labelled as one of the government’s 5 technologies of tomorrow, these discussions imply that AI may be the only thing to survive until tomorrow.
These more recent talks have outdated the original white paper by presenting a less optimistic view of the future of AI development in the UK, focusing on the need for regulation and discipline instead of experimentation and growth.
Why does Sunak care so much about AI?
The Prime Minister has been described as thinking of himself as a “tech bro” by one of his Stanford peers, the Guardian reported, and it was at Stanford where Sunak met his wife, Akshata Murthy.
In unrelated news, according to its annual report, Akshata owns a 0.91% stake in Infosys, an Indian giant of tech and consultancy founded by her father, Nagavara Murthy.
Infosys on Tuesday announced it would be launching Infosys Topaz, an “AI-first set of services, solutions, and platforms using generative AI” which will “help amplify the potential of humans”. I’ve watched enough sci-fi movies to know schemes like this never benefit the user.
How is AI used currently?
Services like Chat GPT have gained popularity with the unwashed masses recently as a form of entertainment and a light-hearted tool in most cases. That tool specifically is very powerful and free, so it’s no wonder people have taken to it.
Before it, there were chatbots like Microsoft’s Tay, a Twitterbot that learned how to communicate the more you engaged with it. This, however, was trolled to death by users, and in less than 24 hours it began defending Hitler.
"Tay" went from "humans are super cool" to full nazi in <24 hrs and I'm not at all concerned about the future of AI pic.twitter.com/xuGi1u9S1A
— gerry (@geraldmellor) March 24, 2016
68% of large companies in the UK have adopted at least one AI technology, with the highest rates of adoption from IT and telecommunications (29.5%) and legal (29.2%) sectors.
In the rest of the world, AI is used to fake images of Donald Trump getting manhandled by the best-funded gang in the world police, to create fake quotes for podcast questions, and to steal and repurpose online artists work.