The future is within us: why we need to pay attention to FLI's open letter to pause AI experiments

Today's open letter is sounding the appropriate alarm bells, and it's time we all paid attention.

1. I've been watching AI for over a decade, on the campuses of MIT and Harvard, at lecture halls, think tanks, incubators, accelerators, and convenings all over Seattle and New York, and its corporate conferences in the halls of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, in private conversations with my clients who are ramping up companies leveraging ChatGPT. Until recent developments, researchers and practitioners have stated that the actual existential threat of AI is "not there yet" and that its technology is quite far away from any real impact on society. And yet, here we are. We must pull the brakes to consider the deep implications of what we're modeling and building and for whom. 

2. It is possible to have AI be a public good. Its implications on who we are, how we connect, and how we work are profound. Having worked for almost a decade in government and campaigns, historically known to move slower than our technologies and startups, there’s an urgent and inspiring opportunity for our elected officials to take the reins of leadership to answer the call of appropriate governance:

“AI developers must work with policymakers to dramatically accelerate development of robust AI governance systems. These should at a minimum include: new and capable regulatory authorities dedicated to AI; oversight and tracking of highly capable AI systems and large pools of computational capability; provenance and watermarking systems to help distinguish real from synthetic and to track model leaks; a robust auditing and certification ecosystem; liability for AI-caused harm; robust public funding for technical AI safety research; and well-resourced institutions for coping with the dramatic economic and political disruptions (especially to democracy) that AI will cause.”

3. For whom are we building the future? The pandemic gave us a reflective pause and tested our collective humanity and the world we want to be in, together. The builders need to be representative of our population and the users of future technologies. Our imperfect present, if not designed and developed with intention, will perpetuate existing inequalities without addressing the possibility of a transformational future together with more access and opportunity for historically underestimated communities and populations around the globe.

We are on the verge of a great transformation; I’m grateful for this call for an intentional pause, and look forward to us exploring this hot “AI summer”, together.