What a week it’s been for those engaged with the burgeoning artificial intelligence agenda, with some mind-boggling quotes emerging from Rishi Sunak’s AI Safety Summit to feed the maelstrom.
Beyond the “AI good” v “AI bad” debate, which was further fuelled by X owner Elon Musk’s comments at the meeting, much of the media conversation over the new technology has for the past two years presented a seemingly contradictory set of propositions for employees to digest.
Some researchers, such as those from the Institute for the Future of Work, have reported that the technology will create new and more jobs. How should we gauge this alongside Goldman Sach’s prediction that 300 million jobs will be replaced by AI and HR directors’ view that AI will reduce headcount?
Musk, hailed by Sunak as a “brilliant innovator and scientist”, certainly knew how to grab the headlines. He said: “We are seeing the most destructive force in history here. There will come a point where no job is needed.”
He went on to discuss the safety risks posed by humanoid AI robots and predicted that AI could bring about an “age of “abundance” with a “universal high income” as opposed to a universal basic income.
The UK government has promised a light touch in terms of regulation, which it feels will boost innovation. But now, at the AI summit, we hear that the UK, US, EU, Australia and China have agreed that AI poses a “potentially catastrophic risk to humanity”. What happened to that light touch?
Last month, the Institute of Directors called on the UK government to revamp its “wait and see” approach to AI regulation and establish a principles-based regime on a statutory basis as a matter of urgency, or face being “left behind”. Yet the IoD’s director of policy, Dr Roger Barker, said the IoD preferred the light touch approach that ministers have so far taken over the “prescriptive rules … being devised by the European Union and some other major jurisdictions”.
Meanwhile, the light touch approach appeared to suffer another blow when, during the summit, President Biden, in the US, issued an executive order requiring tech firms to submit test results for powerful AI systems to the government before they are released to the public.
Sunak after a job?
Peter Kyle, the shadow technology secretary, suggested that Rishi Sunak’s true mission was to lay the groundwork for getting a new job. He said: “The prime minister has been left behind by the US and EU who are moving ahead with real safeguards on the technology.
I don‘t know how horses felt when the car was invented, but they didn’t complain that they were put out of a job; they didn’t go on strike” – Harmeen Mehta, BT
“Unfortunately, Rishi Sunak again allowed himself to be distracted from the serious issues at hand, perhaps with one eye on his future career.”
Matt Clifford, a technology investor involved in organising the summit, joked to The Guardian: “I’ve spent the last 10 weeks telling people it’s not about killer robots and then he’s like, ‘actually it is about killer robots’.”
Support for Musk’s radical position came from BT chief digital and innovation officer Harmeen Mehta who (surely jokingly) told business publisher Raconteur that too much attention was being paid to the technology’s negative impact.
“Society changes and jobs morph,” she said. “I don‘t know how horses felt when the car was invented, but they didn’t complain that they were put out of a job; they didn’t go on strike. It’s part of evolution. Some jobs will change, some new ones will be created and some will no longer be needed.”
How, indeed, did the horses feel? Hang on, are we, the employees and the public now “the horses?”
Mehta added: “The media here is creating a level of paranoia that’s going to paralyse this country”.
Well, that’s hardly surprising given the messages being bandied about by one “brilliant innovator and scientist.”
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