In the world today, technopessimism is reaching a fever pitch. Everywhere you look there are headlines like, “Meta’s AI internet chatbot starts spewing fake news,” “Self-driving Uber Car Kills Pedestrian in Arizona,” and “Artificial Intelligence Has a Racial and Gender Bias Problem.” Artificial Intelligence can be sexist, racist, or just profoundly stupid. However, substitute a human for the AI in the above headlines, and they become completely mundane. The knee-jerk reaction to these sensational headlines is to call for limits and constraints on AI. But the voices calling for the demise of AI need to pause and realize that to err is both human and AI. AI misconduct garners great attention when compared with human misbehavior, but that’s because human transgressions are taken for granted, not because technology is actually worse. In many cases, even the most egregious of AI errors can be audited and corrected. In extreme cases, AIs can be shut down. Society generally frowns on “shutting down” humans whose behavior is stupid or insulting.
Read Full Article »
