Fear Has Won
The US and the UK have decided what the future of AI looks like
This article is a selection from The Algorithmic Bridge, an educational newsletter to bridge the gap between AI, algorithms, and people.
It was not the potential benefits of nuclear bombs that led the US to develop the first one in 1945, which was soon later replicated by other superpowers. It was the fear that the nazis could do it first. A reasonable fear (up to some point), but a fear nonetheless.
It’s not the potential benefits of AI that have led the US and the UK to, respectively, release the first Executive Order (EO) on AI and lead the AI Safety Summit this week. The one sentence that best describes both efforts would be: “They have bought the fear.” The fear that the long-term risks of AI materialize — including that it goes rogue and kills us all.
The UK AI Safety Summit was centered around the long-term risks of AI from the very beginning — the Prime Minister had been giving away hints he had bought the AI existential risk narrative for a few months now, so it’s really no surprise. This isn’t good or bad in itself, just profoundly illuminating of what matters to the UK government.
The EO, although much broader (touches on virtually every topic) also bought an idea that industry leader, Sam Altman…
