What ultimately transpired is the closest thing to a personal episode of Black Mirror I hope to experience in this lifetime.
[ed. Summary: some initial interactions, but then the author starts wondering if the AI is actually reading the essays she's submitted (e.g. quoting lines she didn't write; opening inoperable links, etc.). When it becomes obvious that it's not:
Images: EiaV; ChatGPt
[ed. Scary. Is this some Trump aligned AI or something?! Nope...just the same old (couple years) ChatGPT. It's already lying like crazy (overly trained on politics?) and repeatedly sounding like some insincere apologetic, serial cheater. See also: LLMs: Dishonest, unpredictable and potentially dangerous (Marcus on AI); The Dream of a Gentle Singularity (DWATV); and, Two Years Ago Today in AI History: The Tale of An About-face in AI Regulation (Marcus, again):]
***
We need to maximize the good over the bad. Congress has a choice. Now. We had the same choice when we faced social media. We failed to seize that moment. The result is predators on the internet, toxic content exploiting children, creating dangers for them.– Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), May 16, 2023
I think my question is, what kind of an innovation is it going to be? Is it gonna be like the printing press that diffused knowledge, power, and learning widely across the landscape that empowered, ordinary, everyday individuals that led to greater flourishing, that led above all to greater liberty? Or is it gonna be more like the atom bomb, huge technological breakthrough, but the consequences severe, terrible, continue to haunt us to this day? I don't know the answer to that question. I don't think any of us in the room know the answer to that question. Cause I think the answer has not yet been written. And to a certain extent, it's up to us here and to us as the American people to write the answer.
– Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), May 16, 2023
We think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models.
– OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, May 16, 2023
Two years ago today, Sam Altman, Christina Montgomery, and I testified at the US Senate Judiciary Oversight Committee, at the behest of Senators Blumenthal and Sen Hawley.
At the time, it felt like the highlight of my life. I had a palpable sense of history - this was the Senate’s first hearing on AI. I nearly wept the evening before when I walked by the Capitol at twilight, taking the photo above and reflecting on the history of the United Sates, and the importance of AI to our future. And then, to my great and pleasant surprise, at the hearing itself, the next day, nearly everybody gathered in the room seemed to get it, to be on the same page about the importance of AI regulation and the importance of getting it right and not delaying. As the quotes above illustrate (and I could have chosen many others), Senators, both Democrats and Republicans, recognized the gravity of the moment, and expressed guilt at not having acted faster or more effectively in the regulation of social media. All seemed highly motivated to do better this time.
And it wasn’t just the bipartisan enthusiasm of the Senators that buoyed me, but also the remarks of Sam Altman, perhaps the most visible representative of the AI industry. Throughout the meeting he spoke out in favor of genuine AI regulation, at one point even endorsing my own ideas around international AI governance.
Tragically, almost none of what was discussed that day has come to fruition. We have no concretely implemented international AI governance, no national AI agency; we are no longer even positioned well to detect and address AI-escalated cybercrime. AI-fueled discrimination in job decisions is likely far more rampant than before. Absolutely nothing is being done about AI-generated misinformation, political or medical. By many accounts, AI-fueled scams have exploded, too, and again there is no coherent federal response.
Two years later, Washington seems entirely different. Government officials aren’t worrying out loud about the risks of AI, anymore. They are downplaying them. Congress has failed to pass any meaningful AI regulation, and even worse, they are now actively aiming to prevent States — probably our last hope — from passing anything meaningful. Republicans as a whole are far more resistant to AI regulation now than they were in 2023, and voices like Josh Hawley, who seemed sincerely interested in how to regulate AI, are now drowned out by the administration’s across the board anti-regulatory turn.
And when Altman returned to Senate last week, he sang an entirely different tune, effectively trying to block AI regulation at every turn. Altman is no longer talking about AI regulation, he is actively resisting it.
Which raises a question: Did Altman actually mean any of what he said two years ago? I believed him at the time, but I probably shouldn’t have.
