Time100/AI 2024
Amba Kak, Co-Executive Director of AI Now listed among Time100’s most influential people in AI in 2024.
Time
Nov 15, 2024
The AI industry is pushing a nuclear power revival — partly to fuel itself
“I want to see innovation in this country,” Myers West said. “I just want the scope of innovation to be determined beyond the incentive structures of these giant companies.”
NBC News
Nov 15, 2024
Women in AI: Sarah Myers West says we should ask, ‘Why build AI at all?’
At many points in my career, I’ve wondered, “Why are we getting locked into this very dystopian vision of the future?” The answer has little to do with the tech itself and a lot to do with public policy and commercialization.
TechCrunch
Nov 15, 2024
AI could disrupt the election. Congress is running out of time to respond
Absent congressional action, the task will fall to other government bodies — such as consumer protection agencies and financial regulators — to try to regulate AI under existing laws, said Sarah Myers West, managing director of the AI Now Institute and a former AI advisor to the Federal Trade Commission.
CNN Business
Feb 14, 2024
Op-ed: The Problem With Public-Private Partnerships in AI
Companies first need to do a better job of demonstrating the technology’s societal benefits.
Foreign Policy
Feb 12, 2024
How Walmart, Delta, Chevron and Starbucks are using AI to monitor employee messages
“No company is essentially in a position to make any sweeping assurances about the privacy and security of LLMs and these kinds of systems,” Kak said. “There is no one who can tell you with a straight face that these challenges are solved.”
CNBC
Feb 9, 2024
Former FTC AI Advisor Reflects on Tech’s Tricky & Faulty Incentive Structure
"We need to effectively shift the incentive structures to ensure the companies are accountable to the public."
Analytics India
Feb 8, 2024
OpenAI quietly deletes ban on using ChatGPT for “military and warfare”
“Given the use of AI systems in the targeting of civilians in Gaza, it’s a notable moment to make the decision to remove the words ‘military and warfare’ from OpenAI’s permissible use policy,” said Sarah Myers West, managing director of the AI Now Institute and a former AI policy analyst at the Federal Trade Commission.
The Intercept
Jan 12, 2024
EU’s powerful AI Act is here. But is it too late?
AI Now Institute Executive Director Amba Kak spoke positively of the AI Act, telling PopSci it was a “crucial counterpoint in a year that has otherwise largely been a deluge of weak voluntary proposals.”
Popular Science
Dec 12, 2023
Generative AI is transforming businesses everywhere. Big Tech will still be crowned the winner.
In April, researchers at the AI Now Institute published a report that said AI development had been "foundationally reliant" on the resources held and controlled by the giants.
Business Insider
Dec 8, 2023
Make no mistake—AI is owned by Big Tech
If we’re not careful, Microsoft, Amazon, and other large companies will leverage their position to set the policy agenda for AI, as they have in many other sectors.
MIT Tecnology Review
Dec 5, 2023
What the OpenAI drama means for AI progress — and safety
“The push to retain dominance is leading to toxic competition. It’s a race to the bottom,” says Sarah Myers West, managing director of the AI Now Institute, a policy-research organization based in New York City.
Nature
Nov 23, 2023
The AI Debate Is Happening in a Cocoon
Existential risks—or x-risks, as they’re sometimes known in AI circles—evoke blockbuster science-fiction movies and play to many people’s deepest fears. But AI already poses economic and physical threats—ones that disproportionately harm society’s most vulnerable people.
The Atlantic
Nov 9, 2023
Global leaders commit to pre-deployment AI safety testing
bal leaders commit to pre-deployment AI safety testing AI Now Institute executive director Amba Kak, one of three civil society representatives at the summit table, praised pre-deployment testing commitments, but warned, "We are at risk of further entrenching the dominance of a handful of private actors over our economy and our social institutions."
Axios
Nov 3, 2023
U.K.’s AI Safety Summit Ends With Limited, but Meaningful, Progress
“There has been a complete industry capture of this conversation, and in many ways this summit reflects that,” says Amba Kak, the executive director of the AI Now Institute, a research group. “The context to all of this is that we’re seeing a further concentration of power in the tech industry and, within that, a handful of actors. And if we let industry set the tone on AI policy, it’s not enough to say we want regulation—because we’re going to see regulation that further entrenches industry interests.”
Time
Nov 2, 2023
US House subcommittee dives into privacy, AI legislative recommendations
“We’re seeing new privacy threats emerge from AI systems; we talked about the future threats and how we don’t know where AI is going to go, but we absolutely do know what harms they’re already causing,” Kak said. “Unless we have rules of the road, we’re going to end up in a situation where this kind of state of play against consumers is entrenched.”
IAPP
Oct 19, 2023
Congress scrambles to craft AI privacy rules as industry races ahead
Kak said there is a chance now for lawmakers and regulators to take action before AI systems are “already entrenched in a particular trajectory.”
The Hill
Oct 18, 2023
How AI reduces the world to sterotypes
“Essentially what this is doing is flattening descriptions of, say, ‘an Indian person’ or ‘a Nigerian house’ into particular stereotypes which could be viewed in a negative light,” Amba Kak, executive director of the AI Now Institute, a U.S.-based policy research organization, told Rest of World. Even stereotypes that are not inherently negative, she said, are still stereotypes: They reflect a particular value judgment, and a winnowing of diversity.
Rest of World
Oct 10, 2023
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