By accepting no limits to what they say, free-speech absolutists who broadcast their views with the power and global reach of technology fail to consider the effects of their words on children. Without life experience, kids are defenceless against lies and vulgarities spread far and wide by powerful or popular people. Every adult’s responsibility is to protect the children, and it’s time that children be brought into the free speech debate.
The recent antitrust case lost by Google and another antitrust action now being heard, together with the global failure of Microsoft Windows from faulty code in third-party software highlight our reliance on AI. They also underscore the extent that AI’s future value, currently trading for trillions of dollars daily, depends on the trust of its human users.
Much is lost in the reduction of life as we live it, in four dimensions, to a two-dimensional screen. Influence is easily projected from social media platforms onto the length and width of a screen where depth and time are easily manipulated, and the polarization of opinions is a global threat of stereotyping. We owe it to the world’s children to preserve real four-dimensional life, which will in the long run be good for corporate profits too.
With the release of GPT-4o, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that the company is ceding applications development for its powerful technology to third parties which he expects will “create all sorts of amazing things that we all benefit from.” The first part of OpenAI’s mission statement is to create AGI “generally smarter than humans,” and we ask how the company intends to fulfill the other part of its mission, that AGI “benefits all of humanity,” when third parties control applications.
The race by OpenAI, its partner Microsoft, and others to create and commercialize artificial general intelligence – AGI – begs the question what intelligence is to begin with. Is the intelligence code something that software engineers can crack, or would now be the time for some applied philosophy? The first step to understanding the intelligence in our heads is to stop applying the word to machines; after all, the term “AI” was coined in 1956 as a marketing ploy.
The term “model collapse” has been used to describe the loss of creativity in machine learning trained on its own outputs. Several new studies provide potent examples of the risks of model collapse, and highlight the importance of ensuring the traceability and human-sourcing of data to prevent stereotyping by generative AI.
The Quantum Record is a non-profit journal of philosophy, science, technology, and time. The potential of the future is in the human mind and heart, and in the common ground that we all share on the road to tomorrow. Promoting reflection, discussion, and imagination, The Quantum Record highlights the good work of good people and aims to join many perspectives in shaping the best possible time to come. We would love to stay in touch with you, and add your voice to the dialogue.