Artificial intelligencija
AI criticism widens - Media Ecology Newsletter #29
A week of discussions, marked by the open letter signed by more than a thousand figures from the North American intelligencija on artificial intelligence calling for a six-month moratorium on the release of new versions of GPT and similar technologies, followed by a request to the FTC for a suspension of the sale of GPT and other large language models filed by CAIDP. Machine and human hallucinations aside, the experience marked a new stage in European cultural subservience to ideas coming from the United States. I report some considerations in brief. At the bottom I put links for further study.
Europe is ahead, but it follows
1. Ursula von der Leyen has been talking about a European policy agenda on artificial intelligence since she took office. The European Commission has succeeded in blazing a trail of regulatory and financial initiatives that are as complex as the problem they address. It has not trivialized the issue. It has managed to make a series of important laws that change the structure of relations between institutions, the scientific community, the citizens and the big platforms that emerged at a time when the digital masters were not called upon to take any responsibility.
2. The open letter by the (in a way controversial) Future of Life Institute raises a general alarm related to the advance of large generative artificial intelligences, signals a risk to humanity. But in the face of so much alarm, it merely calls for a six-month moratorium. Which does not seem proportionate. Incidentally, it was noticed precisely because among its signatories was someone like Elon Musk. Who, if he was really that concerned about the social impact of artificial intelligence, should not have fired all of Twitter's artificial intelligence ethicists.
3. Incidentally, the oligopoly that rules this world of artificial intelligence - Microsoft, Google, Meta, Twitter - has allowed all the companies concerned to fire many of their artificial intelligence ethicists in recent months without fear of competitors making a better impression by keeping and perhaps expanding efforts to improve the social impact of these technologies. All those companies, all together, let go of their subject matter experts: as in an oligopoly.
4. The state-of-the-art problem in artificial intelligence is essentially about the proper interpretation of this technology for the good of people, for society and the economy, for democratic resilience, and for cultural quality. It is essentially about starting a process whereby the design of the technology is accompanied by the design of its social impact. It is about designing systems composed of humans and machines, not about producing machines and forcing humans to undergo them.
5. If Europe is consistent with the strategy it has given itself, it can have a great deal of room for growth by designing systems that are smarter from the point of view of human impact. But it must stop being subjected to American culture. Could it be that an open letter on the level of the one launched by the Future of Life Institute had the resonance it did in Europe, when the European Commission had been working much better on the same issues for years? It is a form of cultural subservience that is not justified by facts but only by power relations.
This is what I think we can learn from this week's experience. It is certainly a partial view. And I expect help from readers to better understand other aspects of this affair that I have missed.
Please, see the links below
Follow these links to get more information:
Europe’s Digital Decade: digital targets for 2030 – Commissione Europea
Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter – Future of Life Institute
Big tech companies cut AI ethics staff, raising safety concerns - Financial Times
CAIDP-FTC-Complaint-OpenAI-GPT-033023 – Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy (CAIDP)
The Open Letter to Stop ‘Dangerous’ AI Race Is a Huge Mess – Vice
Intelligenza artificiale, il Garante della privacy blocca ChatGPT – Il Sole 24 Ore
Perché la lettera per sospendere lo sviluppo dell’intelligenza artificiale è tutta sbagliata – Wired
Le contraddizioni di Musk sull’intelligenza artificiale: i buoni propositi non bastano – Nòva100 Sole 24 Ore
Intelligenza artificiale: errori di sistema – La Svolta
L’intelligenza artificiale conosce le lingue, non le culture – La Svolta
Please take a look at Reimagine Europa. A Media Ecology Research Network is being build in Bruxelles and it grows every day. I will be informing on that more in the next issues. Reimagine Europa.
Podcasts in Italian, by me
L’altra metà del verso. Rai Radio 3
Media Ecology. Intesa Sanpaolo on air
Eppur s’innova. Luiss University Press
Ecology of screens
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