Schneier on AI

Dec 05, 2023

AI systems will take advantage of our confusion to take advantage of us. They will not be trustworthy. ...That it is the role of government to create trust in society. And therefore, it is their role to create an environment for trustworthy AI. And that means regulation. Not regulating AI, but regulating the organizations that control and use AI.

argues that AI exploits our "social trust" of the people around us by intentionally confusing it with the "interpersonal trust" we have for people we know, esp by presenting itself in chat format.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that we need trustworthy AI. AI whose behavior, limitations, and training are understood. AI whose biases are understood, and corrected for. AI whose goals are understood. That won’t secretly betray your trust to someone else.

The market will not provide this on its own. Corporations are profit maximizers, at the expense of society. And the incentives of surveillance capitalism are just too much to resist.

...Many countries are contemplating AI safety and security laws—the EU is the furthest along—but I think they are making a critical mistake. They try to regulate the AIs and not the humans behind them.

mass spying will change the nature of spying. All the data will be saved. It will all be searchable, and understandable, in bulk. Tell me who has talked about a particular topic in the past month, and how discussions about that topic have evolved. Person A did something; check if someone told them to do it. Find everyone who is plotting a crime, or spreading a rumor, or planning to attend a political protest.

depressingly, I agree:

We could limit this capability. We could prohibit mass spying. We could pass strong data-privacy rules. But we haven’t done anything to limit mass surveillance. Why would spying be any different?

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