Is Artificial Intelligence Our Greatest Innovation or Inevitable Disaster?

Monitoring the developments within the Artificial Intelligence space is a little bit like watching your child wet their own bed. As you cherish your child’s growth, learning and developments, they inevitably create a mess and if you aren’t paying attention, it’s going to permanently stain.

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With AI's genie already out of the bottle, its rapid integration into our lives has been nothing short of remarkable. From OpenAI’s ChatGPT assimilation, to the efficiencies it's unleashed, the momentum is undeniable. Yet this technology is still nascent, we don’t know it’s full capabilities or impact yet and regulators are slow to keep pace.

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We have all read and observed the explosion of AI tools to boost productivity. Last year the explosion appears to be on an exponential curve similar to the share price of AI heavyweights – the likes of Nvidia, Google, Microsoft are largely driving the S&P 500 to new all time highs. Just as computers revolutionised our world, the evolution of AI, especially with Big Tech's involvement, and the backing of Wall Street, leads to further irreversible adoption. However, the risk of bad actors using this technology for unintended purposes, poses potentially calamitous risks to our society and the development of AI, if left unchecked.

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To contextualise my opening metaphor: the crypto/blockchain world, another new and innovative technology, is currently trying to clean the stubborn stains off their proverbial bed sheets after a string of bad actors, illegal activity, pump and dump schemes, scams, and of course the fallout from the recent FTX scandal with further criminal charges to follow. Slow and ineffective regulation means they are playing catch up, and the potential of this innovative technology has experienced significant setback in its path to mass adoption.

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AI abilities are arguably more far reaching and pervasive than blockchain and crypto as AI accelerate automations and as such the potential for mass adoption is akin to the evolution of the computer. As a tool, the potential for spectacular disaster looms, imposing potentially life changing events, the likes of which we have not seen before. The ability and advancements of deep fakes, data and privacy, misinformation, and manipulation, gives us a glimpse of what is to come. This has the makings of a crime scene with AI fingerprints all over it. These are the dangers regulators must help guard against.

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It is comforting that the EU has recently announced the first regulation on Artificial Intelligence – The EU AI Act – which categorises levels of risk from ‘General purpose and generative AI’ to ‘Unacceptable risk’. While the EU AI Act marks a beginning, whether due to political will or bureaucratic processes, there remains a significant delay in the urgency to implement necessary guardrails. I would expect further changes to come in the way of regulation. The UK has adopted a relaxed approach still, as they either don’t want to stifle the innovation in this space, or the bandwidth to get a handle on this currently doesn’t exist. The capacity of the collective attention can only deal with the immediate crisis and is diverted by headlines of geopolitical conflicts, elections, and public crises. Until something dramatic happens, the urgency will continue. Let’s not wait for this to happen, let’s be mindful and put the right framework in place.? Let’s hope that regulators can get ahead of this thing before a wet bed becomes a permanent stained fixture and stinks the place out – rather than one that can be washed out in the laundry.