Y Combinator President Sam Altman speaks during a fireside chat at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, Pier 48, San Francisco, Sept. 19, 2017. (Dan Honda/Bay Area News Group)
The explosive world of artificial intelligence threatens jobs, political stability, world peace and health, and even, as the AI guru recently warned, even human existence.
“Reducing the risk of AI-induced extinction should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” said 350 AI scientists and other celebrities. It warned in an open letter from the nonprofit AI Safety Center.
This Pandora’s box cannot be closed. The challenge now is how to reap the benefits of AI while taking advantage of its threats and exploits. One of the creature tentacles we unleash is potential disinformation that can be used to damage reputations, provide deadly medical advice, or alter political outcomes. .
The concept of digital disinformation is not new. For decades we have seen this virus thrive on the Internet and more recently on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. And we’ve seen the owners of these platforms hide behind federal laws that deny responsibility and exempt them from liability for falsehoods posted on their platforms.
Don’t extend that shield to AI. Applications such as ChatGPT should not be protected from liability by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Simply put, when an AI product creates content, the company hosting the platform should be responsible for that information.
Without that responsibility, AI would become a dangerous disinformation tool that could threaten our health and the foundations of our nation.
Section 230 was passed by Congress in 1996, two years before Google was founded and eight years before Facebook was founded. It’s old, but it’s still there in the book. The law states that online content publishers cannot be held responsible for “material deemed by the provider or user to be obscene, indecent, indecent, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” ing.
Don’t get me wrong. Article 230 is credited with paving the way for the free and open internet used by millions of people around the world today. However, the law is not without flaws. Social media platforms routinely abuse the system for economic gain, hiding behind the provisions of the measure to evade liability for cracking down on misinformation.
But generative AI, such as Open AI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, are different creatures. The application is clearly a content creator, not just a platform for communicating other people’s ideas. They can compile research from a wide range of sources and write material in much the same way as humans, but with superhuman speed. No threat of writer’s block.
Tech companies want Section 230 to apply to generative AI, and since users are responsible for writing the instructions that AI chatbots use to create content, they can’t control the results. He claims he should be held responsible. This is police designed to rake in billions of dollars while avoiding risk. It ignores that chatbots are content creators, not passive platforms.
Tech companies also argue that innovation is stifled if they can’t prevent companies from being sued over the content their products create. But when it comes to the transformative potential of artificial intelligence, doing it right is just as important as doing it quickly. Trust in Big Tech and its products is at an all-time low. Imagine the damage the tech industry would suffer if artificial intelligence proved to do more harm than good.
We have seen the internet and social media wreak havoc on society under Article 230. AI threats are growing exponentially. It’s important to get the regulations right this time. And the sooner AI abuse is brought under control, the better.
Written by the Bay Area Newsgroup Editorial Board.
