Pros and cons of artificial intelligence/ Former Greek minister: Who owns this "atomic bomb"?

2024-03-02 18:47:00, Aktualitet CNA

Pros and cons of artificial intelligence/ Former Greek minister: Who owns this

The former Greek minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has given his arguments for and against artificial intelligence.

Invited to Ditmir Bushati's "Public Square" podcast, he emphasized that Artificial Intelligence is fantastic, but the problem lies in who owns it and what it is used for.

He points out that if they use it to find out more about cancer and how people survive this disease, that's fantastic, but the opposite is if they use it to create an atomic bomb to attack.

Ditmir Bushati: Yanis, father has shown you that everything that matters in life is pregnant with the opposite. I would like your opinion about artificial intelligence viewed in this direction? So from your father's perspective, how would you view artificial intelligence today in terms of wealth creation, in terms of innovation?

Yanis Varoufakis: Artificial Intelligence is another triumph of the human spirit. In the same way that thousands of years ago we learned to make steel from iron, we were able to domesticate animals even earlier in time or cultivate crops. These are all heroic acts of technology, technological triumphs of the human mind, but like every technological triumph, instead of liberating us, instead of making technology our servant, we become the servants of technology. And this is the dialectical turn.

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The same goes for artificial intelligence. That's wonderful. Actually, I really like AI when I play with its app translation or GPT4. I'm really excited to be living in the age of artificial intelligence when I heard that artificial intelligence has helped scientists at pharmaceutical companies and university labs create antibiotics that kill super bacteria that no man-made antibiotics can kill and escape human life.

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I am very much with her. But as always when it comes to technology, the issue is who owns it, because, you know, it's like an atomic bomb or atomic technology. Who owns the atomic technology and what are they using it for? If they're using it to create radioisotopes to cure cancer to ensure that most people survive cancer, that's a great thing, but if they're using it to build an atomic bomb to blow us up, this is not a good thing. So I'm concerned about property rights. Who owns this damn thing? The big danger of artificial intelligence today is that it takes virtual capital, because we've had artificial intelligence, it's not new, like Google, Zoom, through which we're talking today, they're all driven by artificial intelligence. If you see at the bottom of our screen there is an artificial intelligence application that can be used to summarize what the two of us are talking about. So we've had it here, it's not like it happened to us now.

What is clear is that within the current property rights for the structure and distribution of these machines or technologies we will have a much, much deeper poverty for the majority, an even greater inequality. It will be the first technology that will destroy more jobs than it will create, because it is now attacking not only the work of workers but also the work of intellectuals. Lawyers will lose their jobs, and are currently losing their jobs. Doctors will lose their jobs. Of course we will have new jobs, but the jobs that will be eliminated will be more numerous than the jobs that will be created, and this for the first time in the history of technological change. And the worst part of it all is that our conversation will be completely poisoned when AI algorithms are owned by people with vested interests in poisoning them.

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As you know, we already have the fake "Deepfake" images, we will not be able to rely, we will not be able to know what to believe and what not to believe. So, for example, a copy of you will appear talking about an issue you despise, and it will be very difficult for your audience to know if it's really you or a fake image of you. And when the technology belongs to people with an interest in poisoning the conversation because they have an interest in thwarting progressive policies that oppose their property rights to virtual capital, then I mean your show or podcast is called "Public Square" , but there will be no more "Public Square"./ CNA