Artificial intelligence is everywhere in the news today, and why wouldn’t it be? Many of us grew up with memories of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey or C3PO in Star Wars or Skynet from the Terminator movies.
You’ll notice that two of those three examples had computer personalities as the villains in their respective stories, so, of course, many people have a big fear of AI taking over and doing terrible things to the populace.
Or, at least, taking all of our jobs and leaving us starving.
But my observation is that AI has a long way to go to get to those levels of thinking.
Do you doubt that? Then, take today’s story under consideration in which AI didn’t even take seriously enough the potential for the worst case scenario. Olivia Gomm writes,
[Canadian] Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon has summoned OpenAI’s safety representatives to Ottawa after it was discovered the platform had flagged “concerning” interactions between the Tumbler Ridge shooter and the ChatGPT chatbot months before the deadly attack, but didn’t report the interactions to law enforcement.
Gomm continues:
“The idea that you have had [OpenAI] employees raising flags internally and have not had that information shared, you can’t help but feel that some of these deaths could have been prevented, and that’s something we need to address,” [Justice Minister Sean] Fraser said.
So, OpenAI and ChatGPT couldn’t determine how serious this kid was, so they didn’t report them to authorities, and (allegedly) they ended up involved in a school shooting in Canada.
And we’re supposed to seriously believe that AI can figure out how to turn the entire world into a dystopian technocracy?
Sure.
I don’t see AI being able to take your guns any time soon as, apparently, it isn’t competent enough to stop someone who, unlike a legal gun owner, was a real threat to innocent people.
In the meantime, though, I’ll continue to look for ways to support and provide for my family that don’t need AI’s intervention, and I’ll continue to train and carry daily.
I’d recommend that you and everyone else do the same. Because, clearly, AI isn’t coming to save you.
