Editorial: Keep a leash on artificial intelligence

History will show that 2023 was a pivotal year in the growth of technology. Let’s hope the history books - if we still have them years from now - look kindly upon this new age of tech as a boon for medicine and science and not as a contributor to the downfall of society.

At the risk of sounding like Luddites or alarmists, we have concerns about the emergence of artificial intelligence available to the masses. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s BARD, Microsoft’s Copilot and more offer incredible upgrades to the encyclopedia and the traditional Google search as a research tool, because it can synthesize data from a world of sources to answer our questions in an understandable way.

But some of the vast array of sources AI culls from are not trustworthy. Much of what’s in the locus of written word out there is based on opinion rather than fact. AI doesn’t do a good job of making that distinction. We are embarking on an age of letting computers build a framework of truth that cannot be relied upon to be trustworthy.

As the Hollywood strikes have shown us, among the things at risk is the livelihood of people who create entertainment and culture for us, whether it be writers, poets, actors, musicians or other artists. Smart machines can synthesize the work of a vast body of work to come up with new iterations of music, of screenplays, of images, of movies. The list is endless. We must guard against the death of our artistic culture. That is at the core of what it is to be human.

AI presents a huge challenge to data security. The smarter the machines get, the harder other machines must work to protect what we hold dear - our money, our work, our medical records. And we rely on computers for so much of what we do.

There certainly is an upside. AI will contribute to major advances in medicine. It will be a great tool in solving the world’s engineering problems. It will assist with exploration. It will improve the reach of commerce around the world. It will help solve nagging agricultural problems.

But AI, too, could be a tool used in warfare. It could disrupt our daily lives, given that our utilities are all controlled by computers already.

We’re already seeing downsides to things we thought were technological godsends. We’ve come to rely on many of them too much. If we’re not careful, we’ll become dumber as machines get smarter. Think, for example, of the generations of us who no longer can read a map because we have apps that will simply tell us where to go.

Educators are debating whether and how to use AI in the classroom. We already have to guard against our kids coasting through school on the coattails of AI without having learned anything.

It's clear that AI will be a big part of our lives from here on out. It’s incumbent on us to recognize the downsides as well as the potential for good and to determine where the guardrails should be.

And it will take humans working together to do that.