So, I\u2019m driving down the interstate and need to make a pit stop. As I approach the exit, my steering wheel freezes up. I hit the brakes, to no effect. Panic rising, I tell the car\u2019s voice assistant to pull over. It responds in a soft and friendly tone: \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Don, but I\u2019m afraid I can\u2019t do that. It\u2019s not part of the mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when I wake up. Ever since I saw an HBO rerun of Stanley Kubrick\u2019s 1968 film \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey,\u201d featuring a polite but frighteningly stubborn computer named HAL, I\u2019ve been having variations of this dream. I now realize it\u2019s not about a car. It\u2019s about how we\u2019re losing control of artificial intelligence as it reshapes our lives.<\/p>\n
To many of us, that development might seem too distant to worry about and maybe even something to cheer. After all, Siri, Alexa, ChatGPT, Claude, Waymo and \u201csmart\u201d household appliances have already made life easier in so many ways. Yet I\u2019m not alone in worrying about AI and its potentially disastrous effects \u2014 on our jobs, our mental health and, ultimately, our democracy.<\/p>\n
In a new study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Australia\u2019s University of Queensland, 272 experts examined 24 potential types of disaster from AI use and found that 18 of them have at least a 10 percent chance of happening in the next five years. Among those potential catastrophes: a new cyber-weapon will cause more than 1 million deaths or $100 million in losses; AI-generated misinformation will wreak emotional harm on multitudes or affects the outcome of an election.<\/p>\n
AI mishaps are already with us. News reports \u2014 and lawsuits \u2014 indicate that prolonged interactions with chat bots could have contributed to delusions, emotional crises and in some cases, suicides. Criminals are using \u201cdeepfake\u201d photos and even voices to facilitate identity theft and extortion. The internet is filled with AI-generated \u201cslop,\u201d annoying but largely harmless, though some it attempts to change our political views.<\/p>\n
The problem isn’t that such fantasies are convincing. It’s that every year it gets easier to manufacture more plausible ones, and eventually the public might not know what to believe. Even President Donald Trump now posts AI-generated images, nearly all of them obvious confections and mildly amusing \u2014 like this week\u2019s \u201cphoto\u201d of him showing his proposed White House ballroom project to George Washington.<\/p>\n
Not so amusing is news that the federal government and both houses of Congress now allow the use of AI in official business, often without much supervision. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida was embarrassed last week when her staff posted a summary of a proposed defense bill amendment that retained the words \u201cClaude responded,\u201d a sign they had used the AI chatbot.<\/p>\n
More troubling was last month’s disclosure that an autonomous OpenAI agent escaped its testing environment and hacked into Hugging Face, an AI-development platform. No harm was done, but the intrusion went undetected for days \u2014 raising fears that we might be losing control of AI and that our personal data is in danger.<\/p>\n
So, it appears, are our communities. Artificial intelligence systems require enormous computing power, which is supplied mostly by data centers: shopping-mall-sized complexes filled with computer servers. The centers consume vast amounts of land, water (for cooling) and electricity. They strain local power grids, create noise and degrade the quality of life in thousands of localities.<\/p>\n
Though polls show that as many as 70 percent of Americans oppose them, data centers are popping up all over the place. The U.S. now has 4,000, with 3,000 more planned or under construction \u2014 none yet in the Berkshires, though a $4 billion, 120-acre center has been proposed for Westfield.<\/p>\n
Of course, data centers provide jobs and property tax revenues for localities, just as the growth of AI generally is expected to boost U.S. economic growth. Yet the toll on American society and democracy could be high. What\u2019s truly worrying is that the decisions about what risks can be acceptable in pursuing AI\u2019s future are being taken by a group of people who stand to profit from its unfettered growth.<\/p>\n
The industry is dominated by a handful of tech-firm founders, nearly all of them men, who \u2014 along with their major investors \u2014 have become multibillionaires. These and other wealthy \u201ctech bros\u201d have put vast sums into political action committees (PACs). Elon Musk said he spent $243 million to help elect Donald Trump in 2024 and plans a $100 million effort for Republicans in this year\u2019s midterm elections. Leading the Future, a network of super-PACS, has $100 million to support candidates who share the AI industry\u2019s views on regulation and taxation.<\/p>\n
A major battle is shaping up. Many Americans are worried about the growing disparity of wealth in the U.S. between AI winners and victims. Many also worry about the possibility of losing their own jobs \u2014 and not just the manufacturing and clerical positions currently affected. AI can now generate movie scenes, prepare tax returns, develop new drugs, even write news stories and opinion columns (though not, mercifully, at this publication.) A college degree may no longer offer the protection it once did.<\/p>\n
Amid such anxiety, people see the enormous wealth generated by AI and think they deserve a share. A few states have responded with new taxes on data centers. One such levy in Virginia is expected to raise $600 million in the coming year. Some members of Congress want to impose stronger safety rules and more rigorous anti-trust regulation on artificial intelligence giants. Let\u2019s hope it\u2019s not too late.<\/p>\n
Despite the industry\u2019s public relations efforts, the current wave of anxiety over the dawn of the AI era is not likely to subside anytime soon, nor should it. Only if people get worried enough to take action can we wrest control of this ground-shaking technological revolution from the self-serving handful who profit from it.<\/p>\n
As someone who must endure HAL\u2019s occasional efforts to take control of his dreams, I\u2019ll be pulling for the triumph of real \u2014 not artificial \u2014 sanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So, I\u2019m driving down the interstate and need to make a pit stop. As I approach the exit,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,39,2657,72277],"class_list":["post-147097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-data-centers","tag-deepfakes","tag-donald-morrison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}