Brian Merchant: Column: Afraid of AI? The startups selling it want you to be
You've probably heard by now: AI is coming, it's about to change everything, and humanity is not ready.
Artificial intelligence is passing bar exams, plagiarizing term papers, creating deepfakes that are real enough to fool the masses, and the robot apocalypse is nigh. The government isn't prepared. Neither are you.
Tesla founder Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and hundreds of AI researchers signed an open letter this week urging a pause on AI development before it gets too powerful. "A.I. could rapidly eat the whole of human culture," three tech ethicists wrote in a New York Times op-ed. A cottage industry of AI hustlers have taken to Twitter, Substack and YouTube to demonstrate the formidable potential and power of AI, racking up millions of views and shares.
The doomscroll goes on. A new York Times columnist had a series of conversations with Bing and wound up afraid for humanity. A Goldman Sachs report says AI could replace 300 million jobs.
The concern has made its way into the halls of power, too. On Monday,: "ChatGPT taught itself to do advanced chemistry. It wasn't built into the model. Nobody programmed it to learn complicated chemistry. It decided to teach itself, then made its knowledge available to anyone who asked.
