AI, friend or foe - 5th April 2023

Amid the excitement around artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to change the future of humanity, an exhibition entitled the 'Misalignment Museum' has opened in San Francisco. The exhibition encourages visitors to think about the potential dangers of AI. Audrey Kim's the museum curator.

Audrey Kim: "For this space, it's really trying to create a means for people to approach the tech and reflect on it and see it at different angles. I also think it's, you know, it's really, it is a really, it's a really amazing technology. It's also really terrifying. It, it, it has potential for both good and bad. And so I want to create a space where we can be in a mindspace to be open to both."

As the exhibition opened its doors, some of the world's leading AI supporters have called for a 6 month pause on the development of powerful new AI tools. These include Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

They make the call in an open letter entitled 'Pause Giant AI Experiments', published by the Future of Life Institute. It asks companies to temporarily stop training systems more powerful than GPT-4. The focus instead should be on developing a set of shared safety rules for advanced AI designs. This is recommended to head off the potential harm of the riskiest of these technologies.

Yoshua Bengio, director of the University of Montreal's Institute for Learning Algorithms believes "we've reached the point where these systems are smart enough that they can be used in ways that are dangerous for society."

Back at the museum, Audrey Kim's exhibition is set in a post-apocalyptic world where AI has taken over.

Audrey Kim: "It is in a post-apocalyptic world where an artificial general intelligence, AGI, has already destroyed most of humanity, and has realised that that was bad, and then created this space as a type of memorial for the humans. So, our tagline is 'Sorry for killing most of humanity.'"

All of us are meeting AI on a daily basis when using apps, interacting with computers or even looking at art. With this in mind, should we now be asking the question is AI friend or foe?