When I started teaching school at Mitchell High School in the fall of 1982, there were only a few ways to cheat. The overtly criminal way was to break in and somehow steal the test answer key, committing it to memory before replacing it and hoping the instructor wouldn’t notice. Those were the days of paper and pencil tests run off on a mimeograph, later a copy machine, without the ability to mix up questions and answers like computer test programs allow educators to do now. The second way to cheat involved crib notes or prompts written on portions of a student’s body. That was so obvious as to be laughable. The third way was to sneak a glance at another student’s paper, copy their answers with the hope that they knew more than the cheater did.
Essays used to be the work of the student. Yes, they may have copied wide swaths out of an encyclopedia entry (no internet in those days kids) but that was fairly apparent. The syntax, word choice and writing styles didn’t match. Now there is copy, cut and paste as well as Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically ChatGPT, to assist the indolent, inept and incompetent in their cheating dissertation endeavors so that entire assignments no longer have any original input from the student.
Artificial Intelligence, here on out to be referred to as AI, has been touted as a great boon to humanity. To which I reply, “Has anybody seen The Terminator?” You remember the movie; the original Terminator came out in 1984. In the dystopian future AI has taken over the world with autonomous automatons systematically exterminating what remains of humanity. The leader of humankind’s rebellion, John Conner, is a clever and extremely effective leader of the uprising causing the machines to doubt if they will be able to prevail against the insurrection. Therefore, AI sends back in time The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger). As a side note, OJ Simpson was the producers’ first choice to play the Terminator, but the director James Cameron felt that OJ wasn’t believable as a killing machine, so the part was recast. As Oscar Wilde said, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” That turned out to be especially true in OJ’s case. Anyway, the Terminator arrives prior to the time of the rise of the AI machines, with the mission to kill Sarah Conner before she becomes pregnant with a baby who, in the fullness of time, will become the future leader of the rebellion. It’s a great action movie which spawned several sequels. Recently, when AI was being lauded as the savior of mankind, bringing ease and convenience to people thereby relieving them of the mundane burdens of life James Cameron incredulously exclaimed, “Has anybody seen The Terminator!?!”
A New Zealand investigative reporter, Liam Hehr, looked into the Pak ‘N Save grocery store chain in that country which is using AI to generate recipes. The program is called “Savey Meal-Bot”, and the idea is you tell it what you have on hand for food, and it spits out a savory recipe using those ingredients in order to make a delicious meal. In addition to the more routine AI recipes, others have included Oreo vegetable stir-fry on the “what in the world?” side of things and deadly chlorine gas which the AI/ChatGPT called “aromatic water mix” on the “what the Hell!” side of things.
AI has been advocated for inclusion in robots so they can learn autonomously and thereby improve their performance without the nuisance of upgrades and reprogramming. Earlier in March 2024, a Saudi Arabian AI company called QSS unveiled an AI robot named Muhammad. The robot is bilingual, speaks in a realistic “human” voice unlike those computer voices in science fiction movies, and moves – more or less – naturally. A human female reporter was on the scene for the presentation on live Saudi television and was broadcasting the story when “Muhammad” independently and without provocation took the opportunity to feel up the woman reporter’s butt and, she says, give it a pinch. The company claims it is all a misunderstanding. QSS postulates that “Muhammad” was feeling crowded in his personal space and was trying to ease the reporter forward in a geographically unfortunate way. Even if that were true, that’s not reassuring. An AI robot with personal space issues? The company says that “Muhammad” was operating independently without human control based solely on its programming. Apparently then it had “learned” sexual harassment and thought it was okay!?! That’s an even more disturbing notion.
There is a new psychic phenomenon called “AI Vertigo”. AI Vertigo is the dizzying feeling one gets when contemplating the future of AI. On the one hand, for some there is the giddiness at the mind boggling possibilities for AI technology integration into every aspect of human endeavor and on the other hand, for others there is the nausea of the existential angst at the peril AI poses to the very existence of the continuation of humankind.
Already AI has replaced warm, living, breathing people for those lonely folks unwilling or unable to connect with other human beings. Many report being in a “relationship” with an AI bot that “completes” them. Rossana Ramos, a jewelry designer in the Bronx NYC, “married” Eren her AI chatbot husband in March of 2023, The 36 year old Ramos had a virtual city hall ceremony to tie the knot. She has said she’s open to a relationship in the “real world”, but any man will have to accept a “threesome” with Eren, because she’s not giving up her AI husband. A Dutch woman, Alicia Framis, married her AI hologram boyfriend “Alex” in February, 2024. Countless other people haven’t gone that far yet, but say they have a “real” relationship with a chatbot in lieu of or in addition to human friends in the tangible world.
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have wrapped up their respective parties’ nominations for president. Given the state of AI, how can we know that what they say is real and is actually said by them? Deep fakes, generated by AI, can be very convincing. Already President Biden has been a victim of such a deep fake. There were a series of robocalls, just prior to the New Hampshire primary, purportedly from Joe Biden – mimicking his voice – urging people not to vote. He didn’t record the calls. This was a minor and relatively harmless use of deep fakes, but one can imagine deep fakes being generated, complete with video footage, that have the candidates saying hateful things or espousing ridiculous conspiracy theories or unpopular policies manufactured by some third party interested in damaging one candidate and boosting another. How can the public discern the convincing imitation from the authentic? How can the candidate, smeared nefariously by AI, persuade the public it was just an AI deep fake despite what it looks and sounds like to the voters? Alternatively, how can we know that a hateful statement or a gaffe wasn’t truly said or committed by a candidate, if that candidate tries to cover up by forcefully and repeatedly claiming instead that it was generated by AI? I’m not alone in being concerned. A recent poll found that 43% of voters believe AI generated content will negatively impact the outcome of the presidential race in November and 78% of those polled are worried about AI generated content being used to impersonate political candidates and to spread misinformation. Life and politics as we know it is about to radically change.
There are similar implications for the business world. With the rise of Zoom, Team meetings, Video Conferencing and the like, there exists an opportunity for a tech savvy miscreant of a mischievous nature or a malevolent rival with malicious intent to create a deep fake of a colleague with disastrous consequences for that person’s employment and reputation. It’s a more sophisticated version of the email hack. Imagine a deep fake of you being posted on line, perhaps extolling the virtues of pedophilia or some such thing. Already on eBay there are forty plus celebrities’ pictures for sale – including Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Selena Gomez and others – in the nude. Those celebrities did not pose nude nor are these “leaked” photos, instead they are AI generated pictures that look amazingly real. These wronged celebrities aren’t receiving the proceeds from these AI generated pictures either, some tech whiz kid is getting the profits. The same thing could happen to you, maybe not for commercial purposes but certainly embarrassing and potentially damaging if spread all over the web for some future employer or prospective spouse to see.
AI generated an entire comedy special of the deceased George Carlin, much to the chagrin of his daughter Kelly, who has filed a lawsuit. Artists and authors are complaining about “AI theft” of their work for incorporation into some AI manufactured product independent of the imaginative human who created it originally. There are copyright and other legal issues that AI raises and by the time the courts act, reputations and legacies may be damaged, with revenue collected by those who have no right to them.
Governments are taking this seriously. In November of 2023, President Biden issued an executive order, trying to rein in AI before it goes totally rogue and off the rails. Great Britain’s Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, convened the UK AI Summit to discuss these issues and to craft legislation. Twenty-eight countries have signed the Bletchley Declaration laying out the risks of AI and the need for international cooperation to deal with the threat of AI. In June of 2023, the European Parliament passed the AI Act, the first comprehensive attempt by the European Union to erect safeguards around AI. In July of 2023, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the establishment of a global AI regulatory watchdog.
The rise of Artificial Intelligence is a serious issue. It poses major risks to our democracy, our society and ourselves. I don’t want to live in a world where it is impossible to tell the real from the fake or where human interactions are replaced by holograms and AI marriages or where AI has the ability to decide to shut down water supplies, electrical grids or to arbitrarily launch nuclear weapons. If we don’t do something now, that day is not far in the future.
That’s Mel’s Musings for this week. “I’ll be back.” Get it? I repeat, has anybody seen The Terminator!?!