Martha Lane Fox: "Having a Rational & Reasonable Conversation About A.I. Is Important, Not Becoming Too Hysterical or Hype-Driven"
Pushing that we need to think carefully at what is actually happening and how we can mitigate the risks and double down on the opportunities.
Since ChatGPT launched last November, millions of people have enjoyed experimenting with its often entertaining applications.
However, the recent moratorium by our industry’s tech leaders to “pause” all AI operations for at least 6 months has demonstrated a very realistic fear that we have only seen play out in Hollywood’s most riveting films like The Terminator, Ex Machina, Eagle Eye, and many more.
Just a few weeks ago, an open letter published by the Future of Life Institute, included signatures from Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang, urging AI labs to cease training models more powerful than GPT-4, the latest version of the large language model software developed by U.S. startup OpenAI.
“Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks, and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth?” the letter read.
“Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?” it continued, adding that “[i]f such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium,” it added.
The Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, campaigns for the responsible and ethical development of AI. Its founders include MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn.
This week, tech pioneer Martha Lane Fox also joined the conversation, telling BBC on Monday that business should start thinking carefully about how they choose to use and integrate A.I. into their everyday activities.
“I think that having a rational and reasonable conversations is the important thing and not becoming too hysterical or hype-driven, but looking more carefully at what is actually happening and how we can mitigate the risks and double down on the opportunities,” she said.
Lane Fox, the co-founder of lastminute.com, an online travel agency that was frequently considered to be Britain’s “Amazon,” has been one of the strongest voices in the UK tech scene, championing for equity and parity across the tech sector. She recently became the president of the British Chambers of Commerce.
In 2013, she became the Lords’ youngest female member at the time (at age 40), gaining the title of Baroness Lane Fox of Soho in the City of Westminster.
Turning to the readily apparent gap of women in tech, she says that is “totally horrified” at the situation, adding that there is a higher percentage of women in the House of Lords, where she is a life peer, than there is working in technology.
Integral to Twitter’s Future — Until She Wasn’t
Up and until Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, Lane Fox served on Twitter’s board as a non-executive director, and was integral to the business decisions that were made during what she called an “exhaustive” legal battle between Musk and Twitter.
However, the priorities that she and the other directors had were what she says was “always best for Twitter shareholders,” regardless of the public drama surrounding Musk’s erratic behavior.
“Elon offered an amazing price to the company, and it was clear to the shareholders we had to sell the company,” she told BBC.
However, the jury is still out on the company’s future, according to Lane Fox, who says that it’s still too early to tell what Musk’s impact on Twitter will be, but anticipates it will be “interesting.”
“I wouldn’t underestimate either Elon or Twitter,” she emphasized.
Tech is Speeding Up With Digitization
“There’s no point in sitting here saying ‘AI going to destroy the world’. Well, it’s happening, right? Technology isn’t slowing down. It’s speeding up with digitizing. So we have to decide whether we’re going to digitize in a way that is ethical, that is inclusive, that is sustainable,” Lane Fox emphasized.
In other news, read about Midjourney halting free access to users due to an overwhelming surfacing of deepfakes.
