KEEPING AN EYE ON AI

It won't be a robot war. The true dangers are less cinematic, but no less severe. It will be vital to legislate, monitor, without stifling innovation. Because a disruption is coming. How hard it hits will depend on how well-prepared we are; which will depend on how we defined well-prepared

- Binayak Dasgupta

In tech-industry circles, the ebb and flow of the attention paid to artificial intelligence (AI) has been likened to the seasons. Every now and then, a milestone product heralds an AI spring, setting in motion a flurry of reportage, analyses, conference sessions, start-ups, and funding. This first happened in 2018, when a company acquired by Google, DeepMind, invented AI models that outperformed humans in board games.

Then came a winter. The hype abated, as did the launches, and funding dried up. Until 2021, when AI image generators (such as Dall-e) were launched, giving people the ability to co-create digital art using text prompts.

Then came the winter of 2022, which turned overnight into a glorious summer for AI, with the launch of ChatGPT.

Never before had people been able to converse with artificial intelligence. Now they could have it answer questions, write poetry, generate stories or summarise text. Image generators bloomed at this time, too, helping create realistic, synthetic images of the Pope as a DJ and of former US President Donald Trump fleeing police.

If 2022 was an AI summer, 2023 was hurricane season. Al's potential to transform labour, creativity, entrepreneurship, social interactions and perhaps even political realities became clear, and lawmakers sat up.