Artificial intelligence

NBC News - Concerns about artificial intelligence and the pace of its development have exploded in recent days. Now, tech executives — including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Open AI CEO Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis — are coalescing around the idea that their industry needs to come up with its own rules and standards.

Tech companies have shown some willingness to make changes — but without regulation, they’re also able to undo those changes whenever they want. Litigation has also moved companies to change, like Meta’s recent $18 billion settlement, which included an agreement to place limits on how teens use Instagram. 

The House yesterday overwhelmingly passed a bill that would shield consumers from higher energy costs from new data centers in their communities. But the bill doesn’t address recent safety concerns, and it’s uncertain what will happen to the bill in the Senate. 

Meanwhile, people across the political spectrum, from Steve Bannon to Sen. Bernie Sanders, have called for a “pro-human” future for AI (more on that in today’s Staff Pick, below). Where things stand with AI self-regulation.

Jared Perlo, NBC News - For years, I’ve chatted and met with people skeptical of the speed of AI development — some of them award-winning physicists who worry that a super intelligence could supplant human ingenuity, others activists who have railed against the growing concentration of wealth and power for a select few tech oligarchs.

 Those factions, and more, convened for the first Pro-Human Assembly in Washington, D.C., this week. Faith leaders, A(ish)- list actors, computer scientists, nonprofit activists and more advocated for a more human approach to AI development. The conference had an incredible buzz, especially coming off the heels of last week’s firestorm of headlines about how AI researchers think the technology is moving too fast. There was also a table of free merchandise — I don’t know the next time I’ll be able to nab a free baseball hat that proclaims the benefits of being “pro-human.”

 Despite the camaraderie, attendees seemed to disagree on what “pro-human” actually meant. Steve Bannon railed against China, while Sen. Bernie Sanders advocated for people to have a democratic say in the technology’s direction. The event’s organizers called for the tech to “amplify rather than diminish human potential.” What exactly that means, I have no idea — and I think the 500-plus attendees might have 500-plus different ideas.