After a period of waning interest in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hype around artificial intelligence (AI) is back, and it’s heating up a war between tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook.
But what’s driving this new wave of excitement?
Simply put, these mega-corporations are in a constant race to grow and make more money. In order to do so, they need to showcase their latest developments, dust off old technology that’s been collecting dust, and generate buzz around their brands. However, there is a significant challenge when it comes to corporate executives and AI.
Here’s how I view the corporate AI discussion: If a company has truly created something amazing with AI, then it should be willing to share it freely with the world. Show me how it works, let me use it for free, and open source it. Otherwise, it has zero value to me and to society at large.
This approach may seem counterintuitive to the traditional way American businesses operate, which places a premium on intellectual property and proprietary knowledge. However, AI is a unique case. If a company creates an AI that is smarter than humans, it stands to reason that they would keep it hidden away in order to gain an advantage over their competitors. So if a company claims to have developed an AI technology, but they don’t show how it works, don’t allow people to use it freely, and don’t open source it – what exactly are they offering to the public?
One possibility is that the technology is incomplete, and the company is hyping it up to generate funds for further AI development. This has no real value for the average person. Another possibility is that it’s all just smoke and mirrors – a scam designed to take advantage of people’s fascination with AI and convince them to pay for a technology that doesn’t actually work.
In fact, scams involving AI technology date all the way back to the 19th century, with the infamous “Turk” – a magical AI machine that supposedly played chess. (In reality, it was operated by a human hiding inside the machine.)
Ultimately, the public’s trust in AI technology will depend on how transparent companies are about their developments, and how willing they are to share their progress with the world.
So, how do we avoid getting Turked. Here is my tests for any company working on “AI”
- Can you explain and show us how the AI works?
- Can you opensource the AI?
- Can you make us freely use this AI with no limits?
