OPPENHEIMER IS OUT in cinemas this week, a reminder that tales of catastrophe – both real and imagined – have always been a source of human fascination.
Dr Giovanni Di Liberto, an assistant Trinity Institute of Neurosciences who uses large language models to study linguistics, says that while the recent developments in the field are “very exciting”, the idea that these machines are intelligent in the common sense of the word is inaccurate. Without wishing to stray too far into the realms of philosophy, Di Liberto believes it’s safe to say that there are no “thinking” machines as it stands. AI tools at the moment are narrow in function and the kind of AI we see in sci-fi films, artificial general intelligence , is likely a long way off, if it’s even possible.
Prophets of doom A public statement issued by the Centre for AI Safety on 30 May this year declared that AI poses a risk to humanity on the same level as pandemics and nuclear war. Interestingly, Musk just announced the founding of his own artificial intelligence company, xAI, on 8 July, with the stated mission of “understanding reality”.
Scared customers The broad consensus across the field seems to be that regulation is needed in order to head off the foreseeable and already apparent issues that LLMs and other generative AI systems present. “They’re like internet companies in the 2000 bubble, there is no difference. Money’s pouring in, speculators are getting in, people are riled up. And also I think we are worried about the shift of power in the world towards China, India and other places. So that’s one thing that worries people in the West.”
While Scanlon says she tends to be “more of a realist” when it comes to the topic, she still sees some method behind the heightened rhetoric. “Look at what’s happened over the last couple of decades with the climate crisis. It’s very hard to get people to believe that things are a threat. And a threat is a potential threat, it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
“So I feel like maybe they had to go that far in order to get any attention or to get anybody agreeing to eye down big tech and say regulation is important.”