Artificial intelligence

The artificial intelligence space is strange. Significantly overfunded, overhyped and overcovered — in part because AI can easily produce bad, generic copywriting, which is how many journalists presently earn their livelihoods. Though AI tools have rapidly advanced over the past year, few look to be truly society-morphing, and it’s fairly obvious when something is a product of AI, or it hasn’t mattered. Do you really care if a cliché-ridden cover letter was produced by an unimaginative human mind or a chatbot? But Thursday’s announcement of OpenAI’s new video-creating tool, Sora, is something different.

We are edging into the third month of the strike by the Writers Guild of America, called because of shrivelling residual royalty payments from streaming movies and TV, as well as concern about AI such as ChatGPT being used to generate story ideas – and indeed to write scripts. Hollywood’s screenwriters have now been joined by the 150,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild, which was demonstrated very visibly by the cast of Oppenheimer walking out of its UK premiere last week. ‘We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines,’ said union president Fran Drescher. Susan Sarandon has said of AI: ‘I would hope that in the future people understand the difference between real people making real choices and something that’s basically animation.

James W. Phillips was a special adviser to the prime minister for science and technology and a lead author on the Blair-Hague report on artificial intelligence. Eliezer Yudkowsky is head of research at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. On SpectatorTV this week they talk about the existential threat of AI. This is an edited transcript of their discussion. JAMES W. PHILLIPS: When we talk about things like superintelligence and the dangers from AI, much of it can seem very abstract and doesn’t sound very dangerous: a computer beating a human at Go, for example. When you talk about superintelligence what do you mean, exactly, and how does it differ from today’s AI?

On the smooth marble concourse by the exit doors at Heathrow Airport I met my first cleaning robot. It was purple, made by a company called Mitie and about waist-height – the size and shape of a park bin. It ran on wheels, dragging a grubby mop behind it, and it was polite. As my small son and I stumbled into its path, it backed off smoothly like a well-trained butler. I apologised to it instinctively, after which it appeared to follow us. My son said: ‘Mum, it likes us!’ Then, when we reached the door: ‘Mum, can we take it home?’ Then: ‘Mum, wait! I don’t think it wants to sweep any more. It needs a rest!’ Last month I wrote about deepfake technology and my newfound fear of AI.

Irreligious tolerance Sir: Your editorial ‘Crowning glory’ (6 May) celebrated the religious tolerance in Britain that will permit a multifaith coronation. However, it didn’t acknowledge that in modern Britain nearly half of people have no religious belief. This acts as a buffer, making religious differences of opinion of less importance. Britain is one of the least religious countries in the world. In more strongly religious countries, such tolerance is harder to find. Michael Gorman Guildford, Surrey Admirals on horseback Sir: If Admiral Sir Tony Radakin only had to march at the coronation (Admiral’s notebook, 6 May), he was fortunate. At the 1953 coronation, Lt Cdr Henry Leach (later Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Leach) was in charge of the naval element.

So pack it all in then. Away with the wisecracking butterfly that sits on your shoulder during work meetings. Out with the Gamorrean Guards who play Texas Hold’em with you around a floating table. The metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg’s fever dream of a virtual-reality infused world, is dead. That’s assuming it was ever alive and kicking in the first place. To assess just how “real” the metaverse ever was, we need to go back to its inception in the fall of 2021. That was when Zuckerberg released a video of himself in suspiciously Steve Jobs-esque garb — black shirt and pants, sneakers — tooling around what he called a “home space” that brimmed with holographic bric-a-brac.

With the dramatic expansion of artificial intelligence-generated text, the speed and frequency of the internet's milkshake-ducking has become all the more essential. If you believe that problematic speech is the same as violence, it's hard enough to be on the lookout for material generated by living and breathing human beings — now you have a horde of AI chatbots to monitor as well. And unlike their human counterparts, these chatbots lack the shame and fear to prevent them from saying things at odds with cultural trends. Consider the latest example of this, which comes with the Twitch stream "Nothing, Forever," an AI-and-video-game-engine-generated parody of Seinfeld that has been streaming for several months.