How Regulating AI Could Empower Bad Actors

A bipartisan group of legislators in the House of Representatives has introduced a bill to establish a national commission on Artificial Intelligence regulation. The move comes after weeks of concerns raised by the boisterous “AI doomer” community, a group that believes AI poses significant risks and could potentially even bring about the end of humanity. While it’s easy to paint Silicon Valley tech behemoths like MicrosoftMSFT -1.3% and GoogleGOOG -1.1% as harbingers of the apocalypse, the reality is these companies and others like them may be the best chance we have to create a flourishing and ethical AI industry.

In other words, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. These corporations, being on the forefront of AI technology, have the requisite resources, expertise, and reputational interests at stake to guide the development of AI in a direction that is both beneficial and safe for humanity. They are already leading the way in establishing AI ethics and governance principles, so hindering their development most likely means leaving the future of this powerful technology in the hands of unknown—and potentially very dangerous—entities.

Put another way, we shouldn’t jump on the AI regulation bandwagon just yet. One reason often brought up is that excessive regulation in the U.S. would result in other countries, most notably China, taking the lead in AI development. If we think it is a problem that advanced super intelligent AI will fall into Silicon Valley’s hands, imagine what will happen when an authoritarian regime known for its invasive surveillance practices gets hold of it. However, another set of people we should be equally if not more concerned about are malicious actors within our own borders.

By now many of us are familiar with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Facebook’s LlaMa. But there could also be unknown AI initiatives today operating in secrecy. In fact, if someone is a pioneer in AI development, there are a number of alluring reasons to work clandestinely.

Read the full article on Forbes.