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ai companies are failing on safety
guess who has the most Fs
Amber Rhodes & Dillon Young
December 20, 2024 • Est. Reading Time: 8 minutes
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TL;DR
The 2024 AI Safety Index scores look pretty bad. Should we be worried?
CONTEST: Guess how many f-words*, win big.
Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin, but he won’t stop lying about it!
*It’s not the one you’re thinking.
ICYMI last week: How return-to-office mandates are causing brain drain at large tech and financial firms.
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The 2024 AI Safety Index is kinda concerning…
You know how we’re all using AI almost every day and integrating them into every (sometimes ridiculous) phase of our life and more AI products keep coming out?
Well, the Future of Life Institute (FLI) – which “works on reducing extreme risks from transformative technologies” – just released a report on the safety practices of leading AI companies. And so while they’ve obviously got a bit of a bias, it’s still not pretty.
Here’s the scorecard at a glance:
Yikes! Pretty sure all of these companies would get grounded if they had to present these grades to their parents.
But what does all of it mean? Here’s the gist:
Some of the biggest AI companies only take the most basic precautions when it comes to risk management. Some don’t even go that far.
All of the models reviewed were found to be vulnerable to outside attacks.
All companies examined have expressed a desire to develop artificial general intelligence – aka functioning that could rival or exceed human intelligence. However, none of them have a safety plan for the system to remain safe and under human control 😥
Without independent oversight, these companies are more incentivized by profits than safety/risk mitigation – which means they’re more likely to cut corners without accountability.
This one comment from a panelist should maybe make us all shake in our boots a little bit:
“It’s horrifying that the very companies whose leaders predict AI could end humanity have no strategy to avert such a fate.”
The bottom line? It’s not too late for the AI industry to start taking safety more seriously…but it has to be sooner rather than later. AI usage is only going to expand from this point.
🖥️ What else is happening in tech?
Do you ever feel like you can’t turn work off, no matter how hard you try? A new study finds that hyper-connectivity is causing techno-strain for workers.
A whistleblower who raised concerns about OpenAI breaking copyright laws was found dead in his San Francisco apartment.
Data and AI startup Databricks just secured $10 billion in financing, at a $62 billion valuation. 🤑
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Holiday contest time: Guess how many f-words & win big!
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You gotta respect commitment to the bit
An Australian computer scientist who lives in the UK named Craig Wright is in big trouble for claiming to be the inventor of Bitcoin.
Here’s the deal: the inventor of Bitcoin is a mystery. All we know is that they go by the name Satoshi Nakamoto.
But this guy, Craig Wright, keeps claiming that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. He’s been making the claim since 2016 and he just won’t stop.
Earlier this year, the High Court ruled that Wright is not the elusive Bitcoin inventor after a 5-week trial.
Even after all that, Wright continues to launch legal cases arguing that he has intellectual rights to Bitcoin. Oh, and that he’s owed $1.2 trillion.
But because the court already ruled against him, a judge has determined he’s in breach of the original court order and could go to prison for continuing to bring it up. You’d think at that point you’d give it up, right?!
It appears that Wright is currently hiding out “somewhere in Asia” where he can’t be extradited, so chances are high that he’ll keep this up.
Wright isn’t the first person to claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, but he might be the most annoying.
🫖 What's the tea?
Skechers faces backlash for (allegedly) using an AI-generated ad in a recent issue of Vogue, which raises the question: who’s still buying Skechers in 2024?
Is gambling on the rise? Yep, you can bet on it! From elections to sports to meme coins, betting is having a moment in the US.
A guy from New Zealand who doesn’t speak Spanish just won the Spanish world title in Scrabble. Even more impressive: this isn’t his first time winning a foreign language competition where he doesn’t know the language.
See you next week! 👋
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