In a post published on his blog, the author revisits the debate he had with Keith Teare in March 2023, organized by Open to Debate, on the question of whether ChatGPT would do more harm than good. According to him, the list of negative effects of generative AI is now “quite serious,” and the recent wave of hacks weighs particularly heavily in this assessment.
A worsening negative balance
The author lists several areas of concern: non-consensual pornographic deepfakes, the rise in phishing scams, large-scale disinformation, what he calls “cognitive surrender,” threats to democracy linked to the discreet influence of certain governments on large language models (LLMs), meaning the systems that generate text, as well as the use of generative AI as a surveillance tool. He also cites the consequences of intellectual property theft on artists and writers.
He finally mentions a series of cyberattacks that some have nicknamed “Black October.” Paul Kedrosky dubbed it “The Hackening.” Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, called it a “Code red,” echoing a message from Jason Clinton of Anthropic and judging that he was “100%” right. The author believes both are right, while noting that Jason Clinton thinks this difficult period may only last a year or two.
Less visible benefits
To summarize the positive side, the author relies on Torsten Slok, chief economist of Apollo Global Management, who is sometimes favorable to technology. In an analysis the author deems harsh, Slok states that many of the promised positive effects simply are not materializing.
This assessment does not reject all uses outright. The author acknowledges that some people close to him benefit greatly from generative AI, mainly for software development. However, he believes it is no longer difficult to argue that the technology has, on the whole, been a net disadvantage for society. He adds that there remains the possibility it could bring down the entire economy, without elaborating further on this point.
The post concludes with an announcement: the author is due to return to Open to Debate in Baltimore, alongside Cathy O’Neil. There will be no live broadcast, but edited versions of the event should be published later on YouTube and on many NPR-affiliated stations, including WNYC.
