Cornell Tech Policy Institute Director Sarah Kreps joins Scarlet Fu and Alex Barinka to discuss the impact of generative AI not only on the economy, but also on democratic engagement. Plus, her thoughts on social media apps like TikTok on national security.

San Francisco

The release of Open AI's ChatGPT has accelerated the development of artificial intelligence and warnings about its impact on society.

Rise of AI

What will AI's impact be on politics?

tell me challenges to democracy. What do you mean by that. Yeah thanks. It's great to be here. So one other thing. So I've been working with language models now for several years. And the concern I had was that if looking at 2016 there were bad actors that were trying to insinuate themselves in the democratic process. What happens now when these language models enter and make it really easy to generate a lot of content credible content really quickly. So we wanted to map that terrain. And so we did an experiment and randomly sent a generated text and human generated text to members of Congress the state legislatures around the country. And we saw that members of Congress cannot tell the difference. And anyone who's worked with Chachi B.T. can see just how plausible sounding this content is. And so I think it's important for us to understand the threat and by way of mitigating that threat. And I think that's what we were trying to uncover with this research. Sarah when I think of where misinformation typically lives that's on social media. So I have to ask a I companies folks like Sam Altman are going to Congress saying hey regulate us. Social media companies you've kind of heard the same tune. Who do you think is actually where does the onus fall in terms of who needs to intervene here and make sure that a misinformation and the impact on democracy doesn't get out of control. Right. I think what we've seen with technology and regulation is that often it's very reactive at the federal level. And I think there are good reasons for that. This technology is moving so quickly. And by contrast for example the European Union is trying to really lean into regulation. But I think there's a real risk that they are going to pass this this act and it will come into force and already be obsolete. So I think some of the onus actually is on the firms and open. I has done some of this by making certain outputs not possible. So anyone who's done certain types of trying to push the boundaries on outputs might see that open. I doesn't actually permit those. So I think again this is a spirit of trying to understand through the public and private partnerships you know government and firms kind of what that risk is that threat is but also to try to think through and anticipate is this a too early to regulate or too late. And I think we're still really trying to understand what this technology is about. And so lurching into something at the federal level might be a little premature. So following on what you said Sarah about the onus falling on the firms firms are made up of people. So I wonder any time there's a new leader in charge or they have someone else looking over regulation or their policy side whatever they propose could change as well. How concerned are you about I guess the quality of people who are making these kinds of decisions at these big firms. Right. And this is a question is a great question because we've been thinking about this for several years in different contexts. Content moderation when Facebook was under fire for what they were permitting and not permitting. And it's really a real debate about kind of outsourcing the public market space marketplace of ideas for example to private firms. And again that's something that I think in Europe they're less tolerant of. And in the U.S. I think for good reason we're saying let's let these firms innovate. But what we need to be thinking through is just what guardrails do we need in place to kind of guard against the more extreme consequences of those technologies. It's interesting that you said Europe is already moving ahead and perhaps whatever policy they institute might become obsolete quickly. But because they are moving ahead do they become do they set the precedent that the U.S. that needs to kind of follow up with. You know if we look at previous technologies I don't think that we have the U.S. has fallen in lockstep at all with Europe when it comes to big tech and technology. And I think one reason is if you look at where big tech resides it's almost exclusively in the United States. And so these things do become kind of circular which is Europe is more inclined to lean into regulation in part because it's not harming their their their firms. And the U.S. maybe because it has not leaned into regulation has really I think fostered an environment of innovation. And and again kind of consequently there are fewer incentives for the U.S. to be out in front. And I think again you know when we look at where there's an interesting story about Google's Bard and they haven't they released in 180 countries but not in Europe. And you know when we look at the history of big tech and legal litigation big tech in American companies have not always fared well in Europe. And so I think there is some wariness of these these you know Chachi PT which was banned by the banned by the Italian government. Other firms actually not only not following in lockstep but really trying quite apprehensive of engaging in that sort of European regulatory space. I don't think the U.S. will go in that direction not just because of what we're seeing already but what we've seen with other forms of technology in the past. Now Sarah you talk about the U.S. being reactive when it comes to regulation. We haven't seen any meaningful regulation against reigning in the power of big tech against reigning in social media. What actually do you think needs to happen for A.I. regulations to cross the line here in the United States. Yeah it's a great question because you know again everything is so reactive when we look back to the history of arms control. No there was some indication that we should do arms control on nuclear weapons early. But really it didn't happen until after the Cuban missile crisis. And you know where the world almost blew up. And unfortunately I think that it takes kind of a real crisis existential crisis like that to happen before meaningful regulation can take place. And I do think it raises this question of is are we at that point where we're meaningful regulation is needed. And I would submit that you know we have some threats on the horizon. But because this technology is evolving so quickly and because frankly I don't think these existential risks have presented and are really even a hypothetical risk I think it is a little too early. But you know frankly also we have to think about the political environment in Washington which is not really conducive to doing anything meaningful on really anything because right. There might be an agreement that something needs to be done but disagreement on how to do it.

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Washington

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Council of the City of Sydney

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Wakeley

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Kokoda

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New Delhi

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Tokyo

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Forbes

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Rise of AI