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As retirees, we spend a lot of time thinking about risks that may never happen. We diversify our investments, buy insurance and keep emergency reserves. We don’t need to know that something bad will happen before protecting ourselves against it.
I’ve been wondering whether we should think about AI the same way?
Some of the people building the world’s most powerful AI systems are loudly warning about the risks, even as their companies spend billions racing to make them more capable. I don’t blame them—if one company slows down, another may get ahead. But that’s also why I’m uncomfortable leaving the safeguards entirely to them.
So, indulging my fondness for Isaac Asimov, here’s my admittedly grand proposal: a 28th Amendment!
I’d establish three principles while we humans are still unquestionably in charge. 1) A machine isn’t a person and has no constitutional rights. 2) An AI can’t have the final say over taking a human life, starting a war or sending someone to prison. 3) And humans must always retain the ability to override or shut down an AI.
Congress could handle the details. Borrowing again from Asimov, I’d require advanced AI to have an independent safety filter it can’t disable. I’d keep it from having unmonitored access to banks, power grids, weapons and other critical systems. And I’d require an off switch if it’s hacked, corrupted or starts operating outside its boundaries.
I don’t know whether the worst predictions about AI will come true. I hope they don’t. But that seems beside the point. We don’t diversify because we know which investment will fail. We do it because we don’t know. Perhaps AI deserves the same humility.
I think most folks think AI is or will become a sentient bogeyman that will rule over us. I think of AI in terms of bringing quantities of compute power to a problem. We have been quietly raising the bar on how much that is and lowering the bar on what problems can be addressed. The compute power is sifting through large data sets in a timely fashion using logic that can grow based on what was learned previously. So, the real issues are how reliable is the data and what logic choices have been used to provide an answer. More transparency in these two areas will lessen our fears going forward. We cannot stop the rise of compute power and we cannot stop more and more applications to solving our issues.
Great idea, only I expect the machines might not much care about a Constitutional amendment, or would simply find some clever legal strategy to circumvent such restrictions. Ultimately, it isn’t the machines I worry about so much, as it is the people who are creating and running the machines.
Let’s face it, we need to have some Government regulation. This will sound funny, but I asked AI the question, and they gave very reasonable answers including that Government needs to take the lead. I have confidence, we will have problems for sure, but also we will proceed into the future as we always have.
I think the situation needs addressing, but I think you have prescribed the wrong tool.
Congress can regulate AI through ordinary legislation. Legislation is vastly easier to change as technology evolves. Constitutional provisions are intentionally difficult to change. And we have very little idea what “AI” will mean 30, 50 or 100 years from now.
Great Mark G with your suggestions. Any Government regulation is better than