Guns do not kill people, people kill people.
With AI, AI does not control people, people control people.
In recent AI news, it seems that Elon Musk within the last few days has intensified his legal battle with OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, accusing his company of anticompetitive behavior and sacrificing public and user safety, in the pursuit of market dominance. (READ: MONEY). In a revised lawsuit filed within the last days, Musk has updated a previous filing to over a hundred pages and some twenty-six legal claims. The suit alleges that OpenAI is attempting to monopolize the AI market while forsaking its initial commitment to openness and safety.
Musk, who was a cofounder of OpenAI, has since departed to form his own AI company xAI. Musk is targeting OpenAI and its major backer, Microsoft, of attempting to eliminate competitors like xAI, by pressuring investors not to fund them.
The lawsuit also indicates that anticompetitive practices are being used by attempting to starve out access to AI talent by aggressively using recruiting practices where lavish compensation packages are being offered. OpenAI is looking to spend some $1.5 billion on personnel for a mere 1,500 employees. That then would create an average compensation package of $1,000,000. Nice work if you can get it.
Additionally, the suit shows that numerous security researchers have resigned in protest as safety teams are being replaced for other researchers, namely military.
Other reports show that OpenAI eliminated a safety team focused on the risks posed by advanced artificial intelligence less than a year after it was formed. One departing executive recently warned that safety has “taken a backseat to shiny products” at the company.
Then Microsoft-backed ChatGPT maker disbanded its so-called “Superalignment,” team which was responsible with creating safety measures for advanced general intelligence (AGI) systems that “could lead to the disempowerment of humanity or even human extinction,” according to a past blog post last July.
The team’s dissolution, which was first reported by Wired, came just days after OpenAI executives Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike announced their resignations from the Sam Altman-led company.
Then later OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to Leike’s tweet with:
“OpenAI is shouldering an enormous responsibility on behalf of all of humanity,” Such care, such consideration. It amazes one. Don’t you feel the warmth yourself now?
The sheer arrogance and even naivete of that kind of response, from a person who heads up a major AI company is shocking. In the first place, OpenAI is now clearly removing those whose primary responsibly is safety. It is obvious that OpenAI does not consider the safety and security of the public or its users as important. Not. So, the gentleman’s contention about “shouldering enormous responsibility” is bogus. Their current hiring and retiring practices show otherwise. Let us say it bluntly now, they do not care about you, they do not care about your family, your relatives or anybody that you know. Not.
We should collectively ignore what picture they are painting. The threat from Artificial Intelligence is considerable and larger than you’re being told about.
It is time that the public shake their heads and wake up. It is not the processors, chips, the networks, the advanced computing, in general terms, you must fear, it is the PEOPLE who control the AI systems that you must fear. What the people who control the AI can do to you is beyond belief. People need to clue in that it is what beneath the surface that is important. Our collective naivete has come to dumb us down, thinking that all is ok. Some author, some AI company has told you so. Well kids, nothing is further from the truth. We need to seriously wake up. AI is here to affect humanity on several levels. Human dignity, human security, freedom, privacy, are just the starting points for what you will see eroded. We will save the issues of control, direction, oversight, and dominance for another time; but those uglies are surely lurking in the shadows. Humanity is the frog in the warming pot, near asleep from the heat and oblivious to what is happening. We need to wake up before it is too late.