The AI arms race and you

The thing about AI, really, is that we don’t know a thing.

That’s an exaggeration, of course, but not by much. We all know AI is artificial intelligence, which the dictionary people tell us is “the capability of computer systems or algorithms to imitate intelligent human behavior.”

We know we’re being told that AI is going to change everything, yes. We also know that enormous sums of money are being spent to create AI. Sprawling data centres are being built, and millions of people are being trained and paid to develop it. We know that.

What we don’t know is what it will do. In all of human history, never has so much money been pumped into something that is, at its centre, a big mystery. On the weekend, the New York Times magazine said as much, in a headline: “The A.I. backlash will be ugly and no one is ready. Not even the C.E.O.s.”

Is AI a good thing, or is it bad? Is it going to flop or fly? Is it evil? Is it, as Elon Musk has said to a gathering of American politicians, “a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization”?

That might seem like an overstatement, but an ongoing court case suggests that it isn’t. Two of the richest, most powerful (and completely unelected) men on Earth - Musk and Sam Altman - were in court this week. As controversial as he can be, Musk is the one wearing the white hat. Altman, as we learned in extraordinary New Yorker investigative piece by Ronan Farrow last month, definitely isn’t. To many, he’s indisputably the bad guy.

The case was benignly called Musk v. Altman, No. 4:24-cv-04722, but it was very, very important, portending a dark future. In his pleadings, Musk alleged that Altman’s OpenAI - in which he invested $38 million in the first two years of its existence - was supposed to be non-profit, and for the greater good of humanity. Altman took the money, he alleged, and covertly steered OpenAI to a for-profit model to enrich himself and a few others.

Musk lost the first round, when a jury found that he waited too long to launch his lawsuit. He’s promised to appeal.

He should.

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