Post by Aza Raskin

Last year, after Tristan Harris and I gave a presentation on the promise and perils of AI, Oprah Winfrey approached us to see if we would lend our voice to a special she wanted to create about AI. She said our presentation had opened her eyes and that she not only wanted to learn more about AI herself, but wanted to help others understand too. We were honored to join her on stage during the special, which aired yesterday and is streaming now on Hulu. The inconvenient truth is that the promise of AI cannot be separated from its perils. For example, the same AI that lets you instantly edit your family photos has also caused a proliferation of deepfakes and nudification apps in classrooms that threatens privacy and the health of societies across the globe. AI development is moving so fast and if we don’t act quickly, we may not have a chance to fix it later. We need to take action at a whole-society level by implementing liability for companies that create harmful technology, protecting whistleblowers and other insiders who raise the alarm about important safety information, and requiring AI developers to invest in ensuring their experiments are safe. If we do this, we can also use AI to strengthen our society’s foundations by using it to add context and reduce polarization, accelerate education and retraining as AI disrupts jobs, accelerated updating or sunsetting obsolete and harmful laws, and countless other benefits. As E.O. Wilson said, the fundamental problem of humanity is "we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology." We must move quickly. AI is moving incredibly fast and this is the slowest it will ever be. More on the framework for incentivizing responsible ai development: www.humanetech.com More backstage with Oprah: https://lnkd.in/gNQ9vg_U