January 13, 2023
We've turned a corner with technology. And it's not a good one.
People in general are becoming more and more intellectually lazy. That combined with the enormous proliferation AI, increased reliance on externally-developed autonomous systems whenever and wherever possible, the average person being totally okay with connecting every little gizmo and gadget to their home network without a second thought... too many people have access to incredible technology without the ability to utilize it responsibly.
But then even the people who think they know what they're doing might not know what they're doing. We already have an AI lawyer booting up to defend not one but TWO cases in court. Companies have produced some mind-boggling abilities via AI photo generation and editing, which of course has led to a massive increase in people trying to pass off fake photos as genuine. And don't get me started on the whole deep fake stuff, because outside of legitimate artistic use (such as in de-aging characters for TV and movies) or clear comedic applications (see: Full House of Mustaches), there are little other than terrifying implications.
Government, for the most part, has its hands tied. And where they don't, they're going to either ignore the problem completely OR they're going to make stupid decisions about it, because legislative government is made up entirely of people who don't understand technology AT ALL.
We are at a point that is precariously close to no longer being able to determine what's real and what isn't if we didn't experience those things with our own senses. How long until we see the first AI-generated political attack ad showing the opponent on video doing something that never happened? How long until faked voice recordings are argued as genuine? How long until someone absolutely guilty is TRULY ACTUALLY captured on video doing something horrible provides a plausible defense of "that's a fake video?"
The separate part of this equation is inadvertent danger. 50 years from now, plug a then-modern AI into a team of 1000 robots and task them with helping to reduce climate change. Result: they start killing humans. It's a simplistic scenario, yes, but not entirely unrealistic when expanded out over various intellectual puzzles.
Via the internet, technology essentially has access to the sum of human knowledge. Now we're creating intelligence to act on that knowledge. And just like humans, there will end up being benign intellect and there will be malicious intellect - with people who still don't even know how to live alongside their own caught in the middle. I have zero confidence the majority will operate with benevolent intent, because reality has already shown otherwise.
TL;DR: We're screwed.
(06:44)
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