Did the petition to halt AI development change any tech leaders’ minds?
Methods+Mastery
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In today’s edition:
The Petition To Pause AI Development: A Damp Squib Or A New Precedent?
In 2023, imagination has rapidly turned into reality. HAL and C-3PO have officially passed the baton to self-driving, essay-writing personal assistants. Five months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT, new AI applications are popping up almost every day. And some people are calling for a yellow light.
Okay, not just some people. In an unprecedented move, Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and thousands of tech leaders and researchers recently signed a petition to immediately pause training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 — for the next six months. Today, there are over 27.5K signatures, and more people are signing every day.
So, what sort of impact has this petition actually had, particularly among other tech leaders? And how carefully should we, as marketers, pay attention to it over the coming weeks and months??
Petition granted to start analyzing! ???
What we’re seeing #1: On the whole, tech leaders didn’t support the premise of the petition.?
For more info on how we define tech leaders, see our methodology in the footer below.
Conversation around the petition certainly didn’t move at the speed of AI. When it was initially published, the news didn’t attract much attention from tech leaders on social. A full eight days later, however, the New York Times covered the news and cited Elon Musk and others as key signatories, which sparked conversation on Twitter.
The consensus from tech leaders? Generally pretty negative. 68% of their top retweeted posts opposed the petition. Some questioned the practicality, while others recommended more realistic solutions. As you can see from the graph, conversation died down a couple of days after the NYT article was published. At first glance, it may look like the petition was a flash in the pan. But after some more digging, we have a slightly different take…?
What we’re seeing #2: Although volume was relatively small, the petition provoked strong — and polarizing — emotions.?
What surprised us: tech leaders’ reactions were significantly more negative than the general public on social. The majority of the tech leader group **bombastically side-eyed** the petition’s feasibility, benefits — and motives. Here’s a couple of standout quotes:
“Seems like the ‘6 month pause’ in AI turned into a week or two for most folks.?Easy to sign, hard to do. Lol.”
“I trust and respect some of the signatories. I do not trust the rest… The most you do is pinky promise you won’t experiment on AI for six months?”
Both the general public and tech leaders questioned if the petition was in good faith. They suspected the signatories were more concerned with helping their own companies get ahead of Open AI: “it would hand over a huge boost-advantage - a head start - to secret labs all over the globe, where ethics-are-for-suckers.”?
A handful of tech leaders applauded the list of signatories, and argued for regulation to create a “firm and reliable AI foundation.” But those voices made up a much smaller portion of conversation.?
What we’re seeing #3: Tech leaders weren’t the only group driving discussion.
We expected tech leaders to weigh in on the petition, but influential figures outside of tech?made a loud contribution too. Historians, journalists, artists, and more all chimed in, bringing the petition to their followers outside the tech sphere.?
It’s especially interesting to see how artists used the petition to address the ethics of AI art generation. Artists in Canada created their own petition to protect their work and artist and illustrator Jon Lam earned significant engagement with a rallying call: “WE, the people, the artists, need to continue educating and fighting for regulations that are fair TO US.”
What It Means For You & Your Brand
When tuning into AI conversations, listen to audiences beyond the tech bubble. The petition opened the floodgates to a number of influential non-tech voices who’ve been talking about AI for some time, but haven’t gotten the chance to break through on a larger scale. For marketers focused on AI, it’s important to re-examine who you’re listening to. Only then, can you capture the full breadth of conversation. When it comes to AI influencer and creator partnerships, consider tapping experts such as historians or professors to consult and speak to the integrity of what you’re building.??
领英推荐
This could be the start of more “bottom-up” efforts surrounding AI. Given the scale and influence these newly-minted AI KOFs hold over their respective communities, we anticipate more “people-led” efforts resisting AI — such as the artists who are coming together to protect their craft. We’re also seeing politicians begin to address AI more directly on their platforms, which will likely boost the general public’s awareness and education on the topic as well.?
Be open about the process. The good news about tech leaders’ strong reaction to the petition is that it’s a good indicator of vulnerable areas your own brand might face. Folks were quick to call out self-serving motivations disguised as progressive, with many tech leaders simply wanting to see more transparency and accountability on how AI models are being trained — not necessarily a total halt to its development. Ensure you’re able to articulate the “why” behind your brand’s AI decisions, as well as the “how.”
The Social Scoop
Get up to speed with the biggest stories on social.
Twitter accounts with 1M+ followers keep the ‘Paid’ blue check. Earlier this month, Musk made good on his promise to remove legacy checkmarks, meaning only users who paid for Twitter Blue could have blue ticks in their profiles. Unsurprisingly, the move was met with widespread displeasure, with many high-profile users flatly refusing to pay. This wasn’t the reaction that Twitter was hoping for. So a few days later, accounts with more than 1M followers that had been previously verified started to get their checkmarks back again, despite not paying for Twitter Blue. Head spinning? Ours too.
Here’s our take: Musk’s big planned changes to the verification/subscription process are not going well. So far, just 19K of the 407K legacy verified accounts have signed up for Twitter Blue. On top of that, there’s growing consensus that Twitter’s blue checks are now… wait for it… desperately uncool. Once a coveted status symbol, the blue checks have been caught up in a series of convoluted changes. As users lose patience, the blue check is losing its cultural cachet.?
This puts Twitter in a difficult spot: does it do a complete 180 and give all previously verified accounts that blue check back, or does it double down on these changes and hope that high-profile folks eventually come around? We’ll be watching things as they develop.?
Hate speech continues to rise in Twitter 2.0. Despite Elon Musk claiming there’s 50% less hate speech in the platform than there was pre-acquisition, external analysis seems to contradict this. In fact, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) found incidents of anti-Semitic speech in the app have risen sharply since the acquisition. Additionally, research from GLAAD found that Twitter quietly removed a transgender-specific protection from its Hateful Conduct Policy.
Here’s our take: This is deeply concerning, both for individuals on the receiving end of hate speech and for brands that have their messages spammed by hateful comments. Unfortunately, this rise was to be expected, as Musk oversaw the reinstatement of over 12,000 Twitter accounts that were previously banned, many for hate speech violations.?
Our hope is that Twitter will improve its efforts towards tackling hate speech. But, for the time being, it remains an ever-evolving issue in the platform.
Instagram now lets you add up to 5 'links in bio'. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new feature through his official broadcast channel, saying it was "probably one of the most requested features we’ve had."
As you can see in this screenshot, your Instagram profile can now show how many links you have. People can tap on it to see all the different links you have enabled (R.I.P. Linktree).
Here’s our take: This will apply pressure on linking tools like Linktree, which have long been popular among Instagram creators and brands. Surprisingly, Instagram has taken a long time to respond to this user trend. But it looks like it’s finally ready to take on the third party aggregation tool business. All in all, the flexibility is great for everyone on the app. But, just between us, we think Instagram will find ways to prioritize its native offering.
Graph of the Week
We're a bunch of data nerds over at M+M, which means we love a good graph. Here's one that was doing the rounds in our Slack this week.
TL;DR: It’s no secret we’re big fans of Our World in Data. Here’s another one of their compelling visualizations. This time, they’ve used UN Population Division data to chart how 200 years of rapid global population growth will steadily come to an end. OWID writes that: “This new equilibrium is different from the one in the past when it was the very high mortality that kept population growth in check” and predicts that, “In the new balance, it will be low fertility that keeps population changes small.”
?? Methodology: we used Brandwatch to listen to tech leader conversations on Twitter between March 6th - April 20th 2023. We defined tech leaders as Twitter users who:
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