AI’s biggest risk is the corporations that control them
I was at a conference called World Summit AI in 2018, where a vice president of Microsoft gave a talk on progress in AI.<p>I asked a question after his talk about the responsibility of corporations in light of the rapidly increasing sophistication of AI tech and its potential for malicious use (it&#x27;s on youtube if you want to watch his full response). In summary: he said that it&#x27;s the responsibility of governments and not corporations to figure out these problems and set the regulations.<p>This answer annoyed me at the time, as I interpreted it as a &quot;not my problem&quot; kind of response, and thereby trying to absolve tech companies of any damage caused by rapid development of dangerous technology that regulators cannot keep up with.<p>Now I&#x27;m starting to see the wisdom in his response, even if this is not what he fully meant, in that most corporations will just follow the money and try to be the first movers when there is an opportunity to grab the biggest share of a new market, whether we like it or not, regardless of any ethical or moral implications.<p>We as a society need to draw our boundaries and push our governments to wake up and regulate this space before corporations (and governments) cause irreversible negative societal disruption with this technology.