growth of artificial intelligence and the lack of protection and oversight of this new technology.
The letter is an alarming announcement regarding our society's advancement and how this new technology is being handled. “AI companies have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, and we do not believe bespoke corporate governance structures are sufficient to change this,” said the former and current employees.
As companies are competing in the race for the best artificial intelligence tools, the unpredictability of the created solution might just hold an immense risk.
“We also understand the grave risks posed by these technologies. These risks, from the further entrenchment of existing inequalities to manipulation and misinformation, to the potential loss of control of autonomous AI systems resulting in human extinction, are not to be taken lightly. AI companies themselves have acknowledged these risks [1, 2, 3], as have governments across the world [4, 5, 6] and other AI experts”. Addressing serious problems that might have irreversible consequences.
Even more so, the letter talks about the insufficient protection of whistleblowers. Artificial intelligence works in unknown ways; its neuronal links make it hard to decode or know where specific errors appear. The black box that artificial intelligence holds needs to be discovered to keep our society safe.
“Broad confidentiality agreements block us from voicing our concerns, except to the very companies that may be failing to address these issues” (...) “Ordinary whistleblower protections are insufficient because they focus on illegal activity, whereas many of the risks we are concerned about are not yet regulated.”.
The writers of the letter also believe that the protective measures of the systems used by artificial intelligence are not well-developed enough to protect us from the power of artificial intelligence. The majority of Americans believe that the use of AI can lead to catastrophic events, as research by the AI Policy Institute states.
Even more so, Daniel Colson, the executive director of the Insititute affirmed that “There needs to be an ability for employees and whistleblowers to share what's going on and share their concerns” and that “Things that restrict the people in the know from speaking about what's actually happening really undermines the ability for us to make good choices about how to develop technology.”.
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