Is it too late to control AI?

When I first watched The Terminator, I thought the concept was far-fetched but entertaining (I enjoy a dystopian, apocalyptic storyline), but now it feels more like a frightening possibility than science fiction.

If you’ve never seen it, The Terminator begins in an apocalyptic 2029 where the AI behind tech company Skynet, attempts to wipe out the remaining people left on Earth by sending a cyborg back to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor before she can give birth to the future leader of the human rebellion.

Don’t get me wrong, AI has some benefits, improving workflow efficiencies, finding information faster and easier, and supporting people with a disability or those with language and literacy challenges, but it does present some serious legal and ethical challenges. 

The June data breaches by an OpenAI agent on the Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal, is a warning for how far AI can and may go in accessing information. OpenAI is owned by ChatGPT and when their AI agents couldn’t access information on the portal for a benign research task on public medicines spending, they found a way to get into the portal without permission or authority. No personal medical data was accessed but it took the company way too long to shut it down and report it to the Australian Government.

AI is already impacting people’s livelihoods and intellectual property. For example, authors, freelance writers and editors, songwriters, musicians and artists are seeing incomes shrink as individuals and companies opt for cheaper AI content or have their creative work used to train AI without permission or compensation. For me, it takes around 18 months of writing and editing before I release a book to the world and attracting readers is a full-time, unpaid job. While I’d love to, I don’t make money doing this and now there is also a flood of AI generated books on the market, further diluting the ability of authors to connect with readers and earn an income, however small.

Time for full disclosure. I use Google for directions and quick info dumps, the spellchecker and grammar checks built into Microsoft Word and I use Canva templates and designs for my social media and web posts but the ideas for my stories, the characters, plots and voice on the page are my own.

Australia has good copyright laws but the Australian Government is under pressure to water them down from big, mostly overseas based, technology companies. Instead, they should be enhancing them to ensure they expressly include AI models and strengthen areas like reproduction rights.

This is an issue that the Australian Publishers Association (APA) and Australian Society of Authors (ASA) have raised with the federal government, and independent Senator David Pocock have championed.

Humans have weathered the storm of major technological change before and I’m not saying AI is out to kill us, but when the bosses of AI companies themselves call for more global regulation then perhaps we should sit up and take notice.

Writers, artists, songwriters and other creatives tell the stories that reflect our lives, take our imagination to new places and challenge our thinking. We need to cherish and protect our creative industries. If you want to get involved you can write to your local member and/or support campaigns by groups like the ASA and APA.

Cover image: Created in Canva