Most of us have seen the celebrated closing scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the omniscient onboard computer (HAL), by now wildly out of control, begs not to have its plug pulled. Most of us watched it, but Elon Musk is living it for real…Last week he took time out from halving Twitter’s market capitalisation to co-sign, along with nine hundred and ninety-nine others, a splendid request for a six-month moratorium on the future innovation of complex AI Systems, which, so they all said, “should be developed only once we’re confident their effects will be positive and their risks manageable.”
Of course, we certainly don’t need Mr Musk to tell us about the dangers of developing potentially pervasive technology systems with overriding adverse potential…or, indeed, to tell us how to deal with an unmanageable tangle of associated risks. That’s something…well, to be brutally honest, that’s something very few others beyond Elon Musk have been so conspicuously bad at recently (Twitter being a case in point: a basket case of a negative impact and unmanageable risk if ever there was one). No doubt that’s why, in the very same week as the horde of a thousand seers penned their eye-catching letter, the UK Government itself produced its own flagship White Paper on the future AI Regulation (www.gov.uk), which contains precisely nothing by way of new regulatory powers for the sector. So it doesn’t look like Rishi Sunak’s band of brothers are buying into the Muskish nightmare…
And halfway across the world, neither is India: it currently has no AI-specific regulatory structure and shows no sign of adopting one anytime soon. As a founding member of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (“GPAI”: www.gpai.ai), not to mention an increasingly dominant centre for global technology innovation, the subcontinent has instead been a hotbed for AI strategies for well over a decade. This year it will take over the Chair of the GPAI, meaning it is more likely than ever to make its influence count for the future of progressive AI development. There’s more chance of Boris Johnson becoming a Capuchin Monk than the subcontinent consigning AI’s lot to a Musk-inspired period of purdah…and why, after all, should it?
Not so Intelligent…and not so Artificial
As we’ve had cause to remark before on this platform, there’s nothing especially artificial or intelligent about Artificial Intelligence: sure, in the early days, it was rooted in a fixed set of potentially autonomous rules and programs, which made that closing scene from 2001 so spookily possible, but nowadays (and for quite a few years in fact) it’s been solidly grounded on the work and input of living breathing human beings…literally thousands of them.
The headline-grabbing antics of ChatGPT would be meaningless if the system hadn’t been pre-loaded with multiple thoughts and musings created by real human beings…everyone from artists and architects to mechanics, manicurists, and musicians (the list is virtually endless). And there’s nothing artificial about any of that. Neither is ChatGPT particularly intelligent…there’s no way it can intuitively understand the past or meaningfully appreciate the future: let alone try to understand the present (most basic brilliant life forms…life forms like you and me… find that difficult enough at the best of times).
In real life, the life we all live day to day, the HAL Robot in 2001 would have no fear of the future once it was unplugged (because it couldn’t understand the end in any meaningful sense) and no true perception of what the past was like before it was plugged in.
Instead, what ChatGPT and almost every other AI system do is recognise and process complex patterns of information by reference to their vast pre-loaded (human-sourced) data stores. They do it highly efficiently and way faster than we ever could: but, in essence, that’s all they’re doing.
So there’s no need to pause the future when it comes to AI…no need to “Muskify” the vast potential of emerging technologies to put a block on changing all our lives for the better. Just like India and the UK are doing, it’s time to combine and let all that potential loss.
Executive Overview
Elon Musk may have many virtues (I’m sure he has), but spearheading global technology regulation isn’t one of them: given its enormous potential to improve all of daily lives, this is no time to be hobbling AI.
Red Ribbon India Real Estate Fund
Red Ribbon India Real Estate Fund is a multi asset class closed-end fund registered in Luxembourg offering investors the opportunity to participate in Growth and Emerging Markets and Mainstream Impact Investments, such as India, that offer returns rarely available in western markets.
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