Innovation or manipulative chaos: What is the future of generative AI?

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If you haven’t seen this video of Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin from the Center for Humane Technology speaking about generative AI and its implications, it should top your “to-watch” list this week. The presentation in the video was given roughly one week before the release of GPT-4, and it couldn’t have been more timely.

It explains the state of AI today, what the connection is between the thousands of generative AI tools released recently, how they differ from previous AI technology, what the major risks are, and why this is a watershed moment in human history.

It points out that AI will make us more efficient, faster at writing and creating, help us solve impossible scientific challenges, probably defend civilization from climate change, and unlock incredible economic opportunities. The presentation didn’t mention, but I would add, that AI could also help us end poverty, homelessness, and systematic oppression, among other intractable issues.

But what Harris and Raskin really want people to understand is that it could also lead to:

• the collapse of law and contracts
• automated cyberweapons
• exponential cybercrime
• automated exploitation of code
• automated lobbying
• synthetic relationships
• fake everything
• trust collapse
• reality collapse

To summarize their overarching point, virtually all aspects of human civilization are built on language in one way or another, and the ability of a non-human technology/entity to generate, manipulate, and use language is essentially a zero-day vulnerability for humanity. This is the rationale that prompted (no pun intended) the recent proposal for a moratorium on AI development.

So, what to do? What to think?

To start with, there are some positives to consider.

1. The benefits outlined in the third paragraph of this article are real. AI is doing those things and will get better at them.
2. Even though the scale of challenges is huge, they don’t, for now, involve a high risk of AI becoming sentient or aligning itself across decentralized nodes and evolving into a world-killer.
3. AI itself might be our best shot at solving the problems of AI. If it can use automation to find loopholes in code or legislation, it can also use automation to defend against bad actors trying to leverage those. To the extent that it can be used to create fake everything, it can also mostly likely be used to create ways for us to tell what’s fake. And actually, I’m not convinced that its enabling of synthetic relationships will necessarily present more of a problem than today’s pervasive epidemic of loneliness. We may not have a great idea of how to manage the challenges associated with AI, but AI might.

What about the meantime? What do we do?

It’s certainly possible to take action as individuals, businesses, communities, and professionals. Here are some starting places.

But when pessimism or existential dread feels overwhelming, I have a go-to that I learned from a friend years ago:

Ask yourself, “What’s the next right thing to do?”

• Maybe it’s finishing your work day and going home to your family.
• Maybe it’s making something to eat.
• Maybe it’s getting off the shower floor, drying off, and getting dressed. (Although I would hope you’re not reading this in the shower.)

This strategy is rooted in mindfulness. If AI rains catastrophe down on us all, we’ll have to deal with it. But today, we still have to deal with what’s in front of us, regardless of what that is, and we’ll be most effective at that if we give it our full focus, and don’t get hung up on something that we can’t control.

Make no mistake, AI is scary. But we don’t have to act or even think in service to our fear.

Alan Watts said, "The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance."

And Aristotle: "He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.”

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” — the great Stoic philosopher Seneca.

Personally, I like the classic serenity prayer:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Indeed.

Thanks for reading!

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Tom is Co-Founder & President of Innovation at Massive Alliance, a concierge thought leadership agency. Tom co-founded Massive's Executive Leadership Branding program – through which hundreds of senior executives maximize their thought leadership impact via consistent, mainstream publication distribution at major media outlets like Entrepreneur Magazine, Newsweek, Fast Company, and Rolling Stone.