Lee Rainie, former director of internet research at Pew Research Center, wanted to wind down his career of collecting data with capstone project. Why not predict the best and worst changes over the next decade due to artificial intelligence?
Rainie, appeared on DistrupTV Episode 330, and walked through a massive report from the Pew Research Center. The report (actually more like a short book), As AI Spreads, Experts Predict the Best and Worst Changes in Digital Life by 2035, is worth a read due to the balance between pessimism and optimism. Let's just say prognosticators left their rose-colored glasses at home.
"There's a futurism hat that I wear but Pew is also really well known for general population surveys. You must orient a lot of your questions in a way that the average citizen can interpret and understand. We just did a questionnaire about who has used ChatGPT and 42% of American adults had never heard of ChatGPT," he said.
The survey had 305 respondents and comments from a bevy of futurists, including Constellation Research CEO Ray Wang. "As experts think about AI it's a balanced picture, but lots of people were saying they were equally excited and concerned. Concern is very much on their minds," explained Rainie.
Here's a look at the worst impacts of AI.
- "Profit motives and incentives are driving so much of the most advanced change in generative AI. They worry about data surveillance and collection. Whether it will lead to more human autonomy or less human agency in the world," said Rainie.
- Experts are "worried about the surveillance of citizens particularly in our authoritarian countries. It's just so easy now to keep track of people and to infer what they're going to do and predict," said Rainie.
- While there are ways AI developments are going to lead to better health outcomes, experts are worried think a lot about mental health, wellbeing and the anxiety and depression we've seen come out of social media.
- AI sentience is also going to be an issue. What kind of rights will sentient AI have?
- Wang also surfaced competitive risks. He said:
"What I was really worried about was the largest companies vs. the smallest companies. There's going to be a disparity between small companies that can't compete with large companies for AI and data because the network effects. Individuals can't compete with governments who are going to oppress folks. It's going to be very important for large language models because society is not going to leave anything in the public models. Everything is going to be private and hid behind firewalls. What's going to happen in the future is we're probably going to have to take LLMs and treat them like patents and trademarks. There will be an expiration date, and everything gets turned back into the public good because if you don't do that there will be no more human knowledge."
Despite an appetizer of pessimism, there are a few AI developments worth cheering. Here's a look.
- "There will be amazing health and well-being breakthroughs whether they're the protein folding vaccines, fitness and well-being regimes or personalized medicine changes," said Rainie. "When you bring smartness to all manner of objects of things and organizations, you're just going to get a lot of benefits to society."
- While people are worried about surveillance, these new technologies will give people more power to access information and learn things, said Rainie.
- "A lot of these experts are hopeful that the that the course of human history shows enough times that we've managed change in a way that the species comes out better in the long run," said Rainie.
- AI will drive some clarity for humans. Rainie said:
"One of the meta themes of these expert reports is we're in a period of transition where essentially we're going to sort out the biggest question humans have ever faced. What are we good for and what are what can machines do better than us and what can machines help us do?"