My favorite band is Metallica, and 10 years ago, they released their 10th album: “Hardwired…to Self-Destruct.”. The final track on that album, one of my favorite songs, is called “Spit Out the Bone.” It’s about rogue machines destroying humanity and becoming the center of humanity’s universe—not a novel concept, as we’ve seen this idea play out via Skynet from “The Terminator” movie franchise or Ultron from Marvel Comics.
I listen to “Spit Out the Bone” differently now because of the development of AI and how quickly its pioneers want to make it integral to all of our lives. This week, the AI company Anthropic, developer of the large-language model Claude, filed its S-1 form, the first step in becoming a public company. The S-1 form details to the public what the company is, the current state of its finances and any risk factors an investor may want to be aware of before committing to funding Anthropic.
Among AI’s risk factors—and again, this is from people in the industry—includes its potential to destroy humanity. It seems like giving this industry carte blanche to integrate in our lives might not be the wisest move.
“Concerns have been raised both within our organization and by other researchers, regulators, policymakers, and industry participants that sufficiently advanced AI systems could, if not developed, deployed, and operated with appropriate safeguards, oversight, and security measures, pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity, particularly if such systems were
misused, replicated, weaponized, or allowed to operate with a high degree of autonomy,” Anthropic writes.
Now, this is partially hype, because Anthropic is targeting a valuation of up to $2 trillion, which would put it up there with Alphabet (Google’s parent) and Microsoft as one of the world’s most valuable companies. There is an inherent contradiction in offering the dangers of AI in one hand while asking for investment with the other. Anthropic, which has positioned itself as the ethical AI company, also seems to have developed somewhat of a doomsday culture, and you don’t have to go far to hear an anecdote about an Anthropic employee believing this technology is going to destroy us all.
Ever since we unknowingly published an AI column, I started using AI tools casually because I want to better understand AI’s capabilities, especially as a layperson. It’s impressive technology. In my experience, its strongest value is in its search capacity. I wanted to better identify signs of AI writing, and boy, once you get practice, it’s hard not to see it everywhere.
And that has me thinking that this technology isn’t the answer to our problems that its promoters want us to believe.
That hasn’t stopped people within the journalism industry from going full bore ahead on embracing AI. In August, The Wall Street Journal defended publishing a billionaire’s op-ed, with editor Paul Gigot essentially shrugging his shoulders and saying AI is a part of life now. An analysis by University of Maryland researchers finds that up to 9% of all news in U.S. newspapers contains some AI text. Though, interestingly enough, that very analysis fed stories into an AI detector. At least they disclosed the technology’s usage and the study’s potential limits.
But companies in journalism and in various other sectors are gambling that AI is the future and cutting employees and jobs while—supposedly—allowing the remaining employees to become more efficient by using AI tools.
The potential downstream economic effects are also concerning. Ed Zitron has become one of the most prominent AI skeptics from an economics perspective. His concern comes from a simple premise: The return on investment necessary to justify the amount of expenditures made on AI infrastructure (data centers, chips, builtout) is astronomical. And Zitorn’s picture gets more concerning the further you dig into it (I’m still digging).
And then there are the cultural effects. AI slop—the term for low quality AI content—is getting more common. Schools are having to adjust to the AI age for younger generations that don’t know a world without easy access to technology. People are turning to AI to help them with therapy.
AI is no panacea to society’s ills. And right now, there are few guardrails preventing bad actors from using AI to its worst potential.
Use with caution.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
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