Musing 53

As AI ever advances, there is (for now at least) one truth about it that, despite all the hype around it, still rings true – it is improving.

While the future is not known to me, I think we should work towards these points -

1) mandated responsibility for AI.

One of the things about publicly traded companies is that they have legally mandated positions that are used for accountability, all of those positions being C-suite positions (specifically the CEO and CFO). Long term, we will likely see something similar in many fields.

2) the need for accountability and responsibility will end up driving a lot of future development, once that legal requirement is in place.

The simple reality is that once we start demanding to have someone be responsible for AI generated results in professional contexts (whether software dev, healthcare, legal, etc), that will become a major, dedicated role in those industries. Even if AI does 100% of the actual grunt work, because an AI cannot be held legally accountable, there must be someone who is.

And so over time, as bad decisions have human costs, I hope that we will love our fellow man will lead us to demand that the economic realm employ people to be responsible for decisions and actions made with AI.

3) corporate puffery has to be made illegal

As AI washing (ie blaming business decisions on AI, even though it is some level of obvious that other factors are to blame) continues, the layoffs and other market decisions are still real, despite the underlying lie.

Because of that, I think we will have to see corporate puffery (ie the legalspeak for hyping the company without it being considered market manipulation) become illegal. As AI is unable to differentiate between puffery and truthful statements, puffery will over time will have to be criminalized because now there will be a class of knowledge worker forced to assume that puffery is meaningful. The other option is having a good enough filter to keep such puffery out of the training data for AI . . . which we already know is not being done.

But to effect these changes, we must start lobbying for it now. Go annoy your state/federal representatives until they are sick of you and all your friends. Make them listen. Remember Jesus’ parable about the unjust judge.