The UK weather at this time of year is often variable, and this year is no exception. Rain last night decimated Halloween’s ‘trick-or-treating’ and sightings of ghostly spirits, at least in the Badger’s locality. However, those at this week’s global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park will no doubt have some fun ‘spotting the spook’ because there’ll inevitably be ‘spooks’ from shadowy organisations in their midst! The summit brings together governments, leading AI companies, and many others to consider the risks associated with rapidly advancing AI technologies, and how these can be mitigated via international coordination and regulation.
Given that it’s barely a year since ChatGPT was launched, the fact that this summit is taking place is encouraging. But will something tangible emerge from it? The Badger’s quietly hopeful, even though governments and regulators have historically been glacial and have only acted once a technology is already well-established. The UK government, for example, has taken almost 20 years to establish an online safety law to limit the harms caused by social media. AI pioneers have themselves voiced concern about the threats, and it will be a catastrophe if it takes another 20 years to limit the potential harms from this field of technology!
With Halloween a damp squib, the Badger’s thoughts about the AI Safety Summit roamed fancifully influenced by November’s Guy Fawkes Night and Remembrance Sunday which are just days away. ‘Spooks’ from the shadowy organisations providing intelligence to governments will certainly push for more sophisticated AI capabilities in their operational kitbag to ensure, for example, that the chance of a repeat of Guy Fawkes’ 1605 attempt to blow up Parliament is infinitesimally small! Militaries will also want to develop and use ever more advanced AI capabilities to enhance their physical, informational, and cyber operational defensive and offensive capabilities. Inevitably, lessons learned from current conflicts will fuel further military AI development, but whatever any future with AI looks like, the Badger thinks that red poppies and Remembrance Sunday will remain an annual constant.
The Badger’s grandfathers, and his father and father-in-law, served in the British Army in the two World Wars of the 20th Century. They rarely spoke about their experiences, but they were proud to have fought for the freedoms and way of life we take for granted today. Now all passed away, what would they think about the threat that AI poses to our future? Just two things; that an identified threat should always be dealt with sooner rather than later, and that we must never allow Remembrance Sunday to wither on the vine of time because it’s a reminder to everyone that it’s man who makes sacrifices to protect freedoms, not machines.
‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.’
