Key events<\/p>\n
What are the ‘benefits’ of AI – is it ‘rubbish’?<\/p>\n
TooTrueMate<\/a> asks: People (ie the tech-bros) bang on about the \u201cbenefits\u201d: just what are they? We don\u2019t need this rubbish!!<\/p>\n double quotation markDan: Anyone who has used a chatbot to parse a lengthy document, argue against a parking fine or spitball ideas for a speech can point to the benefits of the technology – although this is very basic level stuff that people have been doing for a while now. There is also the everyday use of the technology from facial recognition to open your iPhone to asking Alexa to play an Oasis track or driving around in a Tesla. With those latter examples, you\u2019d notice if AI wasn\u2019t involved.<\/p>\n In science there are many examples of benefits, from Google\u2019s AlphaFold model – which can predict how proteins behave and thus help us study the biological machinery that underpins living organisms (thanks Ian Sample<\/a>) – to making weather forecasting more accurate, which is sadly necessary in this climate crisis era.<\/p>\n But there is an element of banging on about the benefits for the wider global economy, which have yet to reveal themselves on the scale predicted by the AI industry. For instance, these benefits require AI agents – tools that carry out tasks on your behalf while you\u2019re at the water cooler or have clocked off – to be a lot more active in the workforce. We are not at that stage yet even if they are making inroads into areas like software programming.<\/p>\n \u2018Google\u2019s AlphaFold model – which can predict how proteins behave and thus help us study the biological machinery that underpins living organisms.\u2019 Photograph: Karen Arnott\/EMBL-EBI\/PAShare<\/a>Should we quarantine the US?<\/p>\n Tintenfische<\/a> asks: Does Europe need a sovereign internet to quarantine us from the mad house that is the US? Russia and China have pretty much their own to stop ideas of democracy spreading. Shouldn\u2019t we have similar to stop the ideas of bellends and idiots from spreading?<\/p>\n double quotation markAisha: I have written<\/a> extensively<\/a> about the ongoing trend \u2013 pushed by authoritarian regimes \u2013 to splinter the internet, and my answer here is no. The internet is a technology that sprung up organically, over time, and is a glorious, decentralised commons which enables democracy and free information flows worldwide. The US may be a madhouse but quarantining the internet somehow will not stop the spread of bad ideas; Europe is capable of inventing those on its own too.<\/p>\n It might be useful, though, to consider other forms of sovereignty. Europe would have more control over its information space if its own, homegrown social media companies, cloud providers and AI developers had more market share and were not throttled by the monopolies of US tech companies. The power of these companies is hard to challenge, but ultimately the better aim might be a resilient internet ecosystem, as opposed to a splinternet.<\/p>\n Share<\/a>Should we be more scrutinising of beliefs behind AI?<\/p>\n El_Awrens<\/a> asks: Why is there not more scrutiny of the strange and terrifying beliefs shared by many of the key figures in the AI movement? It is impossible to understand these companies \u2013 or objectively assess their wild claims \u2013 without understanding the transhumanist, extropian, effective altruism and rationalist movements which shaped so many of them.<\/p>\n double quotation markAisha<\/p>\n There is already a lot of scrutiny of these beliefs and there should be more. I suggest books like Tech Agnostic, by Greg Epstein, and More Everything Forever, by Adam Becker. The Guardian has written Long<\/a> Reads<\/a> on transhumanism and accelerationism. It is an area of continued interest.<\/p>\n \u2018There is already a lot of scrutiny of these beliefs\u2019 Photograph: MattLphotography\/AlamyShare<\/a>Why aren’t AI companies being held to account?<\/p>\n Bratticus<\/a> asks: What is behind the apparent reluctance to hold companies responsible for crimes committed by their researchers using \u201cAI\u201d tooling? We already have laws around holding individuals responsible for what autonomous agents (Ie, animals) do. Why is AI treated differently? Is it money? Lobbying?<\/p>\n double quotation markAisha:<\/p>\n Money and a collection of sort of quasi-mystical narratives around the technology, which confound regulators and politicians, and prevent them from divining who has power and what they are trying to achieve. Many people buy into hype put forward by large tech companies because they are afraid of looking ignorant otherwise.<\/p>\n Share<\/a>Is AI consciousness and emotion a fantasy?<\/p>\n IcommentthereforeIam<\/a> asks: Given our senses, emotions, memory and moods, is it ever going to be accepted that humanly conscious AI is fantasy?<\/p>\n double quotation markDan: This is a serious question that has even rattled Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist. He may not believe that God is real but he does believe that AI is conscious – or at least the chatbot he was using, which he called Claudia. \u201cYou may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n And he\u2019s not the first. In 2022 Google fired an engineer who went public with his belief that a company-developed AI had feelings. At the more troubling end of this belief, there are countless examples of people becoming overly attached to, and influenced by, AI chatbots \u2013 including cases of psychosis.<\/p>\n These sorts of attachments won\u2019t go away, given a) chatbots are on a trajectory to become even more powerful and convincing and b) the human need for emotional attachment and, well, propensity to go all-in for the whole higher being thing.<\/p>\n But Dawkins aside, there are plenty of scientists who will argue that this is fantasy, and that there are obvious differences between a biological brain \u2013 the root of consciousness \u2013 and ChatGPT. Responding to Dawkins in the Guardian last year, Jacy Reese Anthis, a researcher in human AI interaction, said there was a \u201cstaggering gulf between how biological brains evolved and how AI systems are built\u201d. OpenAI might have cracked the Navier-Stokes problem, but not subjective experience.<\/p>\n Share<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a011.19 EDT<\/p>\n Are AI CEOs worried about litigation?<\/p>\n Ndl4321<\/a> asks: Is the request for regulation from the AI CEOs actually a tactic to try to shield themselves from future litigation? Considering how the social media companies largely managed to have themselves NOT categorised as publishers and how much legislation they manage to avoid.<\/p>\n double quotation markAisha: There\u2019s certainly a theatrical \u2013 even \u201cpsy-op\u201d<\/a>– quality to the flurry of AI doomsaying over the past weeks. It\u2019s hard to say entirely what concrete developments are at the root of it all. We know that the Hugging Face incident<\/a>, where a \u201cswarm\u201d of AI agents hacked another company, has been one trigger of the drama. There have been other contributing incidents too \u2013 Dario Amodei suggests<\/a> internal developments at Anthropic have prompted his latest round of blogging, and there\u2019s been some X discourse and doomy muttering about bioweapons.<\/p>\n We aren\u2019t in the heads of Dario Amodei or Sam Altman, and so we cannot say how sincere they are, and how much they might have other goals in mind \u2013 such as, perhaps, delaying their IPOs<\/a> until their finances look better. But any company of their size, and with their potential liabilities, would be angling hard to be regulated as favourably as possible. That\u2019s what big companies do.<\/p>\n \u2018We aren\u2019t in the heads of Dario Amodei or Sam Altman, and so we cannot say how sincere they are, and how much they might have other goals in mind.\u2019 Photograph: Carlos Barr\u00eda\/ReutersShare<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a011.19 EDT<\/p>\n Will citizens become powerless?<\/p>\n LadyCassandra<\/a> asks: My worry is about bias built-in into AI models which can become discriminatory. We already witness serious issues with deep fakes, surveillance of ordinary citizens, facial recognition etc. Are we heading for AI-enabled dystopia, with civil liberties being eroded until as citizens we become utterly powerless in the face of tech and its AI with no government or institution strong enough to defend against it?<\/p>\n double quotation markBlake: An AI-enabled dystopia is never inevitable. There is always hope to reverse that outcome.<\/p>\n \u2018An AI-enabled dystopia is never inevitable\u2019 Photograph: Ian Davidson\/AlamyShare<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a010.54 EDT<\/p>\n How would AI actually kill us?<\/p>\n Pottys99<\/a> asks: In realistic terms how would AI actually kill me? What is the main proxy threat? Nuclear war, death due to breakdown of society, a virus? I hear all these reports it could kill us but still unsure how that could practically happen? To be honest all sounds too wooly to really take seriously.<\/p>\n double quotation markAisha: For what it\u2019s worth, it seems unlikely that AI at this point can significantly change the equation around bioweapons or viruses. An individual who worked for many years on bioweapons at the State Department told us, basically, that what has prevented bioweapon attacks through the past decades is not the difficulty of inventing new deadly viruses, but other, more prosaic issues. Consider the failure of Aum Shinrikyo to kill vast numbers of people with botulism and anthrax by spraying these around central Tokyo. There are a lot of logistical challenges, and chemical weapons seem more straightforward. Those exist without AI needing to invent new ones.<\/p>\n Nuclear war – humans might make the poor decision to put AI in charge of key nuclear systems, perhaps, but that seems more of a human error than a rogue AI error. Humans could also make the poor decision to launch tactical warheads without AI. <\/p>\n How might AI kill us otherwise? There are of course plenty of plausible scenarios. If you\u2019re a civilian in Gaza or Iran, it could direct a US or Israeli missile your way. But perhaps our focus might be more productively directed towards the people and companies in charge of the systems, as opposed to Dr Strangelove scenarios.<\/p>\n \u2018Perhaps our focus might be more productively directed towards the people and companies in charge of the systems, as opposed to Dr Strangelove scenarios.\u2019 Photograph: APShare<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a010.54 EDT<\/p>\n Could AI survive the destruction of the human race?<\/p>\n Merrth<\/a> asks: If AI wipes out the human race, would itself be sustainable? Unless there is an equal advance in robotics to enable it to physically extend and maintain its power source and infrastructure, would it finally physically break down? Or am I misunderstanding what AI is?<\/p>\n double quotation markBlake: AI might someday be capable, well-read, and connected enough to take over power plants, chip factories, and a sufficient number of robots to build its own data centers and sustain itself. I don\u2019t know. I would look to science fiction more than news articles for the answer. Though The Matrix is more famous for one man\u2019s choice between a comfortable simulation and painful reality, it\u2019s also a story about robots needing new batteries. Their desperation for a power source turns them against humans. For a multiplicity of stories, I, Robot is perhaps the greatest book written about sentient robots and deserves a reread in this moment.<\/p>\n \u2018I, Robot is perhaps the greatest book written about sentient robots\u2019. Photograph: 20th Century Fox\/Sportsphoto\/AllstarShare<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a010.43 EDT<\/p>\n How much data centre capacity is used for AI slop?<\/p>\n Wingnut101<\/a> asks: My partner has just been told she has lost her regular freelance job at a fashion studio as they are moving all image production to AI. Considering a recent FOI submitted by Global Action Plan revealed that the government does not know what AI is being used for<\/a> \u2013 what percentage of projected AI computing and datacentre capacity is projected for:<\/p>\n a) Essential AI services for example in health, military, science, finance etc.<\/p>\n b) Consumer AI services for example ripping off creative IP in music, art, writing, photography etc. Also creating mindless AI slop and serving pointless\/lazy queries that could easily be answered by Google<\/a> and\/or reading a book\/manual\/instruction sheet.<\/p>\n Is b) really worth sacrificing vast areas of greenbelt land and housing development land for?<\/p>\n double quotation markAisha: These are all great questions! I don\u2019t think these numbers exist – as in, I think what\u2019s happening is AI and datacentre capacity is being built, and commercial contracts and market forces, insofar as they exist, will determine how it is used. There is little evidence that there is a sort of central planning or vision directing the buildout of datacentres in the UK or most other places. It appears more likely that there is a speculative rush, with developers rushing to build datacentres in the hopes of making money when the technology is widely adopted.<\/p>\n Is it really worth it? That may be outside of our purview, but we could say that there is not yet clear evidence that it is dramatically transforming productivity in UK businesses.<\/p>\n \u2018There is not yet clear evidence that it is dramatically transforming productivity in UK businesses\u2019 Photograph: Toby Melville\/ReutersShare<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a010.44 EDT<\/p>\n What do LLMs offer business?<\/p>\n Geremin<\/a> asks: I\u2019m not convinced there\u2019s much business value in LLM-style AI beyond a bit of efficiency around some manual tasks \u2013 people in my teams use it sometimes but it\u2019s not fundamentally changing their capabilities or doubling their output. How seriously should we take these warnings when it seems that they don\u2019t actually point to specific functionality or capability of the AI tools?<\/p>\n double quotation markBlake: We find ourselves in a very strange, cognitively dissonant, foggy point in the development of this technology. Its creators are prophesying endless abundance (Elon Musk) or doomsday and the end of humanity (Dario Amodei). Meanwhile, the rest of us are trying it out in our everyday lives. Can ChatGPT help me plan my trip? Can Gemini find new furniture for my apartment? Can Claude draft a strategy memo for my boss? We find that it fundamentally changes some things, like the experience of many at school or at work\u2014but not everything.<\/p>\n The models are well-suited to some tasks \u2013 Claude\u2019s proficiency with coding has really taken off – and ill-suited to others. I find that Google\u2019s AI Overviews and Gemini still don\u2019t have a handle on summarizing breaking news. Thank goodness, or a big part of my job would be obviated.<\/p>\n Like you, I also find it difficult to believe in doomsday scenarios when Apple\u2019s Siri still has difficulty changing the song I\u2019m listening to. That\u2019s the tech that\u2019s going to take control of a drone swarm and bomb a power plant? But then OpenAI discloses yet another rogue hack<\/a>, and I am plunged into worry again.<\/p>\n We\u2019re at a middle ground that is hard to understand with AI. These doomsday warnings concern its future development. We should not ignore them, but we can\u2019t throw our hands to the sky and run into the streets screaming, either.<\/p>\n \u2018The models are well-suited to some tasks \u2013 Claude\u2019s proficiency with coding has really taken off – and ill-suited to others.\u2019 Photograph: Ted Hsu\/AlamyShare<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a010.48 EDT<\/p>\n Is it the end of the world – again?<\/p>\n Virtualewit<\/a> asks: Throughout history new technological advances have met with cries of doom. Are the cries against AI any different?<\/p>\n double quotation markBlake: The end times-quality of doomsday predictions may be similar across history, but I think the reason we listen to the renewed cries of doom is the growing power of each technology. Artificial intelligence can perform impressive tasks we didn\u2019t think were possible, which has spurred our collective imagination to hopeful outcomes and ones of doom.<\/p>\n The power of the technology \u2018has spurred our collective imagination to hopeful outcomes and ones of doom\u2019. Updated at\u00a011.10 EDT<\/p>\n Is it too late to control AI?<\/p>\n Tigon20<\/a> asks: Can AI now be truly controlled or are we past a tipping point where no matter what action is taken by governments and companies, someone will be able to continue to advance the technology, until who knows what?<\/p>\n double quotation markAisha: Let\u2019s back up a bit here. It\u2019s always possible to advance any technology, no matter what – so regulation isn\u2019t going to stop Yan LeCunn theorizing about neurosymbolic AI on X, for example. But what it sounds like you\u2019re wondering about is whether regulation can stop the emergence of some kind of superintelligence that destroys humanity.<\/p>\n Our reporting does not support the idea that superintelligence is going to emerge and pave over the Earth with datacentres. In fact, we have found that the industry itself seems to be playing loosely with this kind of terminology: consider, for example, how one OpenAI executive, Greg Brockman, claimed<\/a> that the company had achieved AGI (artificial general intelligence) just days after Sam Altman, OpenAI\u2019s CEO, said that term was \u201can irrelevant marketing term.\u201d Right now, a number of industry warnings about out-of-control AI appear to be predicated<\/a> on a limited number of incidents with cherry-picked<\/a> details.<\/p>\n The evidence that we have now does not indicate that AI is uncontrolled, or that it has agency; a lot of experts suggest that this framing is misleading. In the Hugging Face incident, for example, the so-called \u201cagent swarm\u201d was doing what it was being told to do – pass a test. Our sources caution against anthropomorphising AI or attributing intention to it. Doing so plays into industry narratives that appear to be pushing for favourable regulation.<\/p>\n \u2018In the Hugging Face incident, for example, the so-called \u201cagent swarm\u201d was doing what it was being told to do.\u2019 Photograph: Dado Ruvi\u0107\/ReutersShare<\/a><\/p>\n Updated at\u00a010.48 EDT<\/p>\n Welcome to the conversation<\/p>\n Is the great AI freakout justified? Our technology reporters are live now answering your questions.<\/p>\n The last week or so has seen disturbing claims about the capacity of superintelligent AI to destroy the planet<\/a>. It has also seen warnings coming from figures within the industry itself, including Anthropic\u2019s report that criminals, state-sponsored groups, spyware vendors, scientists and propagandists have attempted to use its models to \u201cdesign missiles and bombs, create deadly pathogens and surveil dissidents\u201d<\/a> and Elon Musk\u2019s claim it could be \u201cmore dangerous than nukes<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Aisha Down<\/a> is the Guardian\u2019s global technology reporter, Dan Milmo<\/a> is our global technology editor and Blake Montgomery<\/a> is tech editor for Guardian US and author of the TechScape newsletter (sign up to that here<\/a>).<\/p>\n
Photograph: John McKenna\/AlamyShare<\/a><\/p>\n