The rise of AI will only make Big Tech more powerful, researchers warn
"If we want to make any meaningful reform in the tech industry, we need to start by confronting the concentration of power," Sarah Myers West, managing director of AI Now, told Insider.
Business Insider
Apr 25, 2023
Generative AI risks concentrating Big Tech’s power. Here’s how to stop it.
If regulators don’t act now, the generative AI boom will concentrate Big Tech’s power even further. That’s the central argument of a new report from research institute AI Now.
MIT Technology Review
Apr 18, 2023
Opinion | Competition authorities need to move fast and break up AI
Unless regulators act, Big Tech’s dominance over the digital economy will be cemented
Financial Times
Apr 17, 2023
OpenAI’s chief scientist helped to create ChatGPT — while worrying about AI safety
But others say that focusing on how to control yet-to-arrive AI systems distracts from the real and present dangers of the technology. It “puts intervention way off on the horizon”, says Sarah Myers West, managing director of the AI Now Institute, a policy-research organization in New York City. Instead, she says, we need “to tackle near-term harms”, such as AI systems reinforcing biases in their training data, or potentially leaking private information.
Nature
Apr 13, 2023
Finally, a realistic roadmap for getting AI companies in check
In a new report, the AI Now Institute — a research center studying the social implications of artificial intelligence — offers a roadmap that specifies exactly which steps policymakers can take. It’s refreshingly pragmatic and actionable, thanks to the government experience of authors Amba Kak and Sarah Myers West.
Vox
Apr 12, 2023
The Technology 202: Former FTC advisors urge swift action to counteract ‘AI hype’
Authored by two former advisers to FTC Chair Lina Khan, Amba Kak and Sarah Myers West, the paper offers a glimpse into how key tech regulators may respond to Silicon Valley’s soaring interest in AI
The Washington Post
Apr 11, 2023
AI Isn’t Omnipotent. It’s Janky. – an interview with Amba Kak
Everybody’s talking about futuristic risks, the singularity, existential risk. They’re distracting from the fact that the thing that really scares these companies is regulation. Regulation today.
The Atlantic
Apr 3, 2023
500 Top Technologists and Elon Musk Demand Immediate Pause of Advanced AI Systems
"But here’s what’s key to understand about Chat GPT and other similar large language models: they’re not in any way actually reflecting the depth of understanding of human language—they’re mimicking its form.”
Gizmodo
Mar 29, 2023
Elon Musk and several other technologists call for a pause on training of AI systems.
“By focusing on hypothetical and long-term risks, it distracts from the regulation and enforcement we need in the here and now,” Myers West said.
NBC News
Mar 29, 2023
Google’s Bard AI chatbot has now been released to the public
“We should be concerned that the current hype around generative AI is prompting these companies to push their products into development really rapidly,” says Sarah Myers West at the AI Now Institute, a research centre in New York. “Now the companies are experimenting in the wild with them, versus really taking the time to mitigate potential risks prior to deployment.”
New Scientist
Mar 21, 2023
The Battle For AI Supremacy Got Super Intense This Week, Risks Be Damned
“There’s so much hysteria and hype around these faster and faster rollouts right now,” said Amba Kak, executive director of New York University’s AI Now Institute and a former senior adviser on AI to the Federal Trade Commission, “that I think we’re in danger of walking back a lot of the progress that has been made around responsible release practices and the need for regulatory oversight of these technologies.”
BuzzFeedNews
Mar 17, 2023
GPT-4: OpenAI says its AI has ‘human-level performance’ on tests
“If anything, OpenAI has provided even less detail with which to evaluate its new system,” says Sarah Myers West at the AI Now Institute, a research centre in New York City. “But what we’ve seen so far in the roll-out of generative AI is that these systems are prone to error […] so we should be wary of any claims that these issues are resolved.”
New Scientist
Mar 14, 2023
It’s way too late to stop TikTok
“These firms are optimizing for things that allow them to make money,” says West, “which is attention, your willingness to click on an advertisement, and your willingness to make a purchase.”
Fast Company
Mar 8, 2023
As A.I. Booms, Lawmakers Struggle to Understand the Technology
“The picture in Congress is bleak,” said Amba Kak, the executive director of the AI Now Institute, a nonprofit research center, who recently advised the F.T.C. “The stakes are high because these tools are used in very sensitive social domains like in hiring, housing and credit, and there is real evidence that over the years, A.I. tools have been flawed and biased.”
The New York Times
Mar 3, 2023
Sam Altman says ‘potentially scary’ AI is on the horizon. This is what keeps AI experts up at night
Sarah Myers West, Managing Director of the AI Now Institute, told Euronews Next that "in many senses, that’s already where we are," with AI systems already being used to exacerbate "longstanding patterns of inequality".
EuroNews
Feb 28, 2023
The Mimic: How will ChatGPT change everyday life? Sarah Myers West on artificial intelligence and human resilience.
West expects this latest version to affect certain industries significantly—but, she says, as uncanny as ChatGPT’s emulation of human writing is, it’s still capable of only a very small subset of functions previously requiring human intelligence. This isn’t to say it represents no meaningful problems, but to West, its future—and the future of artificial intelligence altogether—will be shaped less by the technology itself and more by what humanity does to determine its use.
The Signal
Jan 17, 2023
How AI chatbots are changing how we write and who we trust
What ChatGPT is, and how it works. Will it change how much you can trust what you read, or hear?
NPR
Jan 10, 2023
Mental health service criticised for experiment with AI chatbot
The experiment “raises significant ethical and moral concerns”, says Sarah Myers West at the AI Now Institute, a research center in New York City."
New Scientist
Jan 10, 2023
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