In my last two columns, I argued that AI brings both opportunities and great dangers, some even existential. This transformative technology also threatens fundamental values, including personal and institutional accountability, the rule of law, democracy and even what it means to be human. Moreover, AI will be hard to regulate successfully, not only because its impact will be pervasive, but because progress is being driven by fierce competition among businesses and between the US and China.Remarkably, a recent post from Anthropic states that “we are delegating a growing share of AI development to AI systems themselves . . . Taken far enough, and given enough compute, that trend points to an AI system capable of . . . autonomously designing and developing its own successor.” The post then states that “if it were possible to . . . slow the development of this technology, to give ourselves more time to deal with its immense implications, we think that would likely be a good thing”. If even Anthropic, a leader in AI, is fearful of what lurks ahead, the fears of the rest of us, especially the young, can only be reinforced.
我在前两篇专栏中提出，AI既带来机遇，也蕴含着巨大危险，甚至是一些关系到人类存亡的危险。这种变革性的技术还会危及基本价值观（包括个人和机构问责）、法治、民主、甚至是人的本性。而且，成功监管AI将非常困难，不只是因为AI造成的影响将无处不在，还因为其进步背后的驱动因素是企业相互之间以及美中之间的激烈竞争。