What happens when AI starts gaslighting us?

There are two camps forming – those who believe AI is dangerous and should be turned off and those who believe society is grown up enough to handle whatever changes AI brings.

Of course – they’re both wrong.

Like everything in life, reality is more nuanced and we need to take a balanced approach if we’re going to get through the next decade alive.

What we think of as AI is just doing what it’s asked. When we use AI in building our personal news stories for OneSub – Better News we work hard to make sure there’s no hallucination and our articles are likely more trustworthy and clear than any you’d find elsewhere on the internet.

When others use AI for “research” we find lawsuits for defamation popping up across the world becuase. creativity is being reframed as false truth.

This is all interesting enough.

But if OpenAI – or others – follow the direction suggested by Microsoft’s “Sparks of GAI” paper then the next thing will be giving it agency and intent… and helping it think to the end of the sentence (ie short term memory)

When that happens, we may unlock humour, mischief and deception – amongst other things.

My question is this: how do we stop society obsessively squabbling over things invented yesterday – at the expense of considering the things we will invent tomorrow.

How to we prepare for the future with a level head?

AI – and I mean powerful, intentional and independent GAI – is right around the corner and when we discover we’re not ready, because we’re all distracted with our own narcissim, it will be our fault – not its – when it decides it doesn’t want to play with the childish humans.