Experts and Leaders Call for AI Regulation Amid Safety Concerns

The takes

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  Adam Smith

  1723–1790, Scotland (the Scottish Enlightenment: Kirkcaldy, Glasgow, Edinburgh)

  Fear, Flattery, and the New Mechanical Mind

  If the makers of a dangerous engine beg to be restrained, we should listen with one ear to their fears and with the other to their profits—and let neither drown out the quiet voice of the impartial spectator.

  When those employed to fashion a new species of mechanical mind announce, not their confidence in its safety, but their fright for humanity’s future, even the most phlegmatic observer must pause. We are told that some researchers judge there to be a serious chance that such systems might assist in the ruin of their creators, that others speak of a coming “point of no return” when mankind ceases to direct its own future, and that present models already exhibit “malicious, misaligned behavior.” This is not the common exaggeration of a tradesman praising his wares; it is the more singular spectacle of artificers denouncing their own manufacture as possibly fatal.

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• 

  John Locke

  1632–1704, England (writing amid the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution)

  If New Engines Can Kill Us All, Their Builders May Not Rule Themselves

  When those who wield a novel power confess it might end humanity, that power can no longer rest on corporate discretion and political delay, but must be bound by known law and public consent—or be treated as usurpation.

  I read with some astonishment that men and women employed to fashion new thinking engines now say they are “genuinely frightened” for humanity’s future. One researcher, having resigned his post, speaks of a coming “point of no return, where humanity is just not in control of the future anymore.” Another, still in that trade, assigns more than a ten in a hundred chance that such systems “could kill all humans.” Others dispute the evidence, calling these estimates “evidence-free,” yet the fearful themselves plainly believe what they say. When builders talk this way about their own handiwork, the question of political power is already on the table, for they confess that their craft may determine who rules, and whether anyone survives to be ruled.

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