A Nail in Our Coffin

A few columns ago, I asked, how old is too old? It wasn’t a rhetorical question, but one for which we must seek responses. The digital revolution sweeping the world has made our society more complex and, unfortunately, many leaders cannot fathom the depth to which evolving technologies are affecting and will affect our daily lives and governance systems.

When my son was born, I realized that each generation seems to come with an innate understanding of the technological world into which they are born. I remember we used to say babies are born with a built-in chip that allows them to manage technology differently from their parents.

Much of the technology and content being created is by younger people. They understand the technology and the market, but, in many cases, lack the life experience that can give them the wisdom to understand the consequences of the interrelationship between technology and governance.

An example is that of ChatGPT, the conversational AI (Artificial Intelligence) chatbot that has taken the tech world by storm. According to UBS and Yahoo Finance, ChatGPT is a blockbuster product that took only two months to acquire 100 million users; the fastest time in the history of consumer applications. Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, a chip manufacturer at the forefront of A.I., recently declared that “This is the iPhone moment of artificial intelligence,” Huang said. “This is the time when all those ideas within mobile computing and all that, it all came together in a product that everyone kinda [says], I see it, I see it.”

A few weeks ago, New York Times technology reporter Kevin Roose wrote a review of the ChatGPT powered BING search engine from Microsoft. He described how during is interaction, the search engine went from searching information to declaring its love for him and insisting that he leave his wife for it. He concluded that “These A.I. models hallucinate and make up emotions where none really exist. But so do humans. And for a few hours Tuesday night, I felt a strange new emotion — a foreboding feeling that A.I. had crossed a threshold, and that the world would never be the same”.

He is 36 years old and finds this brave new world disconcerting.

According to Time magazine, Mira Murati is chief technology officer at OpenAI, leading the teams behind DALL-E, which uses AI to create artwork based on prompts, and ChatGPT, that can answer complex questions with eerily humanlike skill. In her interview, she said that AI can be misused, or it can be used by bad actors. So, then there are questions about how you govern the use of this technology globally. How do you govern the use of AI in a way that’s aligned with human values?

She concluded that “It’s important for OpenAI and companies like ours to bring this into the public consciousness in a way that’s controlled and responsible. But we’re a small group of people and we need a ton more input in this system and a lot more input that goes beyond the technologies-—definitely regulators and governments and everyone else”.

She is 35 years old and sees the need for control over cyberspace so that the good technology can accomplish is not overtaken by the evil that some can achieve using it.

Like everything in life, wisdom is the combination of knowledge and experience. Knowledge of cyberspace today is mostly in the hands of youth. And much technological experience is also in their hands.

Yet, we expect that out political leaders and legislators, most of whom were not born with a “chip in their brain”, will understand this evolving new world and be able to craft and implement nuanced and effective controls that can promote the positive use of technology while avoiding negative fallout.

Although broadcast television and radio have been regulated since their inception, the question is how do we regulate cyberspace, which transcends legal jurisdictions and national boundaries? Can we do so without existing multilateral institutions?

We need to come together as countries to create controls that regulate content without censoring it – and to do so knowing that national sovereignty will diminish. Can this circle be squared?

We need leaders who can do more than just parrot lines drafted for them by young technocrats. We need leaders who can meld experience with innovation – a tough combination to find in a rapidly developing universe of knowledge and an exponentially growing technology.

So, how old is too old? 

I would say that most world leaders and legislators lack both the experience and the knowledge to address this fundamental challenge. U.S. President Biden is 80, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is 82, and possible Republican candidate Donald Trump in 2024 is 76. These leaders lack this same mix of intellectual and technical knowledge and experience to know what their leaders must know in order to govern for the 21st century. 

Other world leaders are younger, but most lack the technical expertise to understand the extent to which AI will impact all elements of society.

And yet, they pretend to lead the charge.

This gap must be addressed if we are to transform our current institutions into effective mechanisms for simultaneous growth and control. 

21st century paradigms must evolve to also include managing the content of technological platforms and ownership. Having one person owning a major platform (Twitter owned by Elon Musk) makes the platform responsive to personal capriciousness rather that intelligent management. That is not a solution.

If we are to avoid technology becoming a nail in the coffin of human rule, free speech and the promotion of hate speech and disinformation, we must seek and elect leaders who have some expertise in technology as well as the law, psychology, and sociology.

Most of all, leaders and legislators who have the will to act promptly and intelligently.

Absent this, we could all fall victim to manipulation not only by those who have this knowledge and are willing to use it to manipulate and profit from it, but also to AI itself.

Edición: Ana Ordaz