ai: your industry is too scary!
People are starting to be afraid of Artificial Intelligence.
2023-03-13
I sometimes find myself rewatching this old talk by Maciej Ceglowski: Haunted by Data and I'm always finding it insightful and relevant. With the latest news and whispers that AI is coming for all of our jobs I cannot stop thinking in one of his slides: Your industry is too scary!
After drawing a parallel between the data industry and the troubled industry of nuclear energy (sic), one of his key takeaways is:
“Don't be surprised. The current model of total surveillance and permanent storage is not tenable. If we keep it up we are going to have our own version of Three Mile Island: some widely publicised failure that galvanises popular opinion against the technology and then people who are angry and mistrustful and may not understand anything about computers will regulate your industry into the ground.”
With the current state of marketing and selling speeches around the new AI revolution (as well as the poorly and unprofessional media coverage) I can foresee a future where Maciej's ideas might become reality.
People are starting to be afraid of Artificial Intelligence, artists are starting to get angry about the use that AI companies have made of their images, top names in the industry are calling to do a pause on research and even big vendors sometimes cannot explain what's going on. All of this is starting to sound like a recipe for a regulatory disaster.
So, what can we do about it?
- AI needs a communication effort outside the sales pitches of Big Corporations that are commonly inflated by the desire to create big expectations on investors and prospect clients.
- The AI ecosystem needs a more close and collaborative interaction between experts and journalists to clearly communicate to the society what's going on.
- The AI community and corporations should embrace open as a design principle. We cannot win a communication battle by trying to explain and ask people for comprehension if what we propose in exchange is a black box managed by billionaires.
AI proposes new challenges that can only be solved by a collaborative network of actors with a common goal: to make Artificial Intelligence fair, sustainable and open.
Better together than alone.