By Tom Fowdy
Stock markets around the world are falling, at least when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) companies and those dependent upon the technology.
As quoted by the BBC: "Hundreds of billions of dollars in market value have been wiped from major tech firms in the US and Asia in a stock market rout after the US midterm elections sparked concerns of a slowdown in artificial intelligence development."
The mid-term election results in the US have been consequential precisely because the Democrats have taken control of both houses of Congress, as voters opted to punish the Donald Trump administration, in an outcome which far exceeded expectations; but not only that, the Democrats are widely anticipated to initiate a legislative and regulatory pushback against the massive rise of AI, which over the past few years has appeared unstoppable in its rise.
This has led many people to declare that what has been described as the "AI bubble" has finally burst. The rapid rise of AI, after all, has been an extremely contentious subject, not least because it is, as I have previously described, a "technological revolution." What we describe as a "technological revolution" is an event in history whereby a new, landmark innovation fundamentally disrupts and upheaves the entire socio-economic order of human life, producing permanent and irreversible changes.
Examples of historical technological revolutions include the Neolithic Revolution: the invention of agriculture, which ended human hunter-gatherer culture, created permanent settlements and thus civilizations, and the Industrial Revolution: whereby machinery transformed societies from sustenance-based to mass-production and consumption-based ones. There are of course many more examples, but you get the picture. Each technological revolution changes the entire world, and subsequently empowers and disempowers various social groups based on how it affects their interests. This steers their reactions to it.
The rise of AI is, whether people like it or not, one of these revolutions, and this context helps us understand why the reaction to it is so contentious. The rise of AI has given people the power to utilise tools and skills that were once only available to small groups, who utilised those skills as a trade, and replicate their work on a whim. I have never in my life learned to code, yet through artificial intelligence at its scale, I have learned I can create entire computer operating systems, vast portfolios of personal software and games, on a whim. I can pour out whatever is in my mind and bring it into reality, having in the past not being able to do so due to not having the necessary know-how, or having to pay others to do it.
But this itself is the fundamental ethical dilemma of AI. For me, hypothetically speaking, it's great, but for those who dedicated their lives to coding, developing websites, games, or software, it is grim. People in real time are waging their precious, hard-earned skills being made obsolete by machines, and this is why the usage of AI has become so divisive in modern-day society, in accordance with need. Despite the complaints, however, AI is everywhere. I just need to open Facebook, and I see dozens of ChatGPT-generated posters, and mountains upon mountains of AI-generated video material, amongst other things. I thus subsequently believe that because the economic incentives of AI are so strong, it is impossible for it to just disappear in the way many of its critics might hope.
Still, this does not mean that the rise of AI ought to be frictionless, or that it should be immune from regulation or scrutiny. There are many other ethical dimensions, beyond a simple notion of skills, to be considered. People are concerned about the massive expansion of data centres, the enormous pressure it is placing on chip and RAM resources, the consumption of water reserves to power it all, and the very real threat, once only a trope of science fiction, that AI could potentially overpower and bring about the destruction of humanity. This subsequently raises the question: are big AI firms acting in the best interests of humanity? It is hard to answer "yes" to such a premise sincerely, even if in some ways you benefit from the technology, unless of course you are the one profiting from it.
Thus, even as AI rises, we should expect checks and balances to follow, and rightfully so. The emergence of this technology is akin to the Greek myth of Prometheus, a Titan who defied the will of the Olympians by creating humanity and teaching them how to use fire, once a privilege of the gods alone. For this sin, he was punished by Zeus by being chained to a rock with his liver to be eaten by an eagle every day, forever. Through AI, ordinary, unskilled humans are gaining the power to do profound things, and now the gods are angry. However, even as Prometheus was chained to a rock, his creation was not. The AI genie cannot be put back in the lamp, but I suspect the "Wild West" days of its uncontrolled expansion might be starting to come to an end.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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