Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig – What’s Yiddish for “Trouble Ahead”? AI, AI, AI
The “news” is what’s happening “today.” But years afterwards, when historians and the public look back, their perspective shows a much different picture. At this moment, Israelis are into the upcoming elections (ditto Americans in the U.S.), but years hence the main development of the mid-2020s will be something else entirely: Artificial Intelligence. Of course, that doesn’t mean we know how this will turn out.
Like most revolutionary technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) offers different things for different sections of society – and it’s not clear at this stage who wins and who loses. Here’s a previous, historical example: the Gutenberg print revolution back in the mid-15th century. The Church thought that print would be a wonderful means to distribute relatively inexpensive, printed prayer books could be distributed to the masses, enabling more people to participate in church services. But it didn’t take long (about 70 years later) for Martin Luther to exploit print and widely disseminate his theses through posters on church doors to start the Protestant Revolution that violently divided Christianity in two (or more).
So take my analysis here with a grain of salt – or two. Nevertheless, I did succeed once in my academic career to be well ahead of the game. Forty-five years ago (1981) I published the first-ever academic article on the legal ramifications of AI harm (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229067941_Frankstein_unbound_Towards_a_legal_definition_of_artificial_intelligence).
Who wins and who loses with AI? At this stage one can generalize that AI is very popular on the macro level (governments), becoming highly unpopular on the micro level (most workers), and somewhere in between these two un/popularities on the meso-society level (corporations).
Governments see AI as a tremendous economic and security booster – able to provide the same services (or more) to the public with far less cost – not to mention potentially offering a huge boost to the national economy. Moreover, as in every other important technology, there’s the fear that “if we don’t do it, our enemies will get ahead of us.” Thus, for example, the Trump Administration is trying to ward off what it sees as over-regulation of AI by various states, so that AI companies can be given virtually free rein to “do their thing” at breakneck speed. Of course, “breakneck” speed can turn out to be literally true – breaking the neck of society. (His Administration is now having second thoughts on the matter.)
That’s precisely why the West’s public has become increasingly wary, even fearful, of the AI boom. There are several good reasons for such trepidation. First, there’s the worry that AI’s very success could lead to massive unemployment, as employers use it to do more work with less wo/manpower. AI doesn’t have to be “better” than humans; it’s sufficient for AI to be good enough: cheaper, quicker, and widely deployable: Artificial Good-Enough Intelligence.
Second, AI has been found at times to provide bad advice to people seeking psychological help – even encouraging suicide! This is not absurd; humans tend to what’s called “cognitive surrender.” A recent study found that participants followed AI’s advice 80% of the time when given the wrong answer! (https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/study-do-what-chatgpt-tells-us).
Third, AI has exponentially increased the ability of “bad actors” (e.g., criminals, foreign enemies) to do harm, whether by massive “phishing” expeditions or by more easily breaking security codes and other cyber, self-defense measures.
Fourth, and certainly not least, AI uses massive amounts of electricity through its humongous data centers, potentially driving up electricity prices for everyone. NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) has reemerged big time in America.
As a result of these countervailing trends, companies are caught in the middle – not wanting to fall behind their competitors but also not wishing to alienate their customers and employees. As a result, in Europe as well as in the U.S., a most unusual phenomenon has emerged: several dominant AI companies themselves are asking governments to pass AI regulatory measures so that they know what they can and cannot do with their AI algorithms. As for the electricity bill problem, AI companies are so worried about this public backlash that they’ve begun serious thinking about ultimately placing data centers and their power sources on… the moon!
All this involves potential direct harm (and benefits). However, more subtle but no less dramatic is AI indirect harm. As we increasingly rely on AI to do our heavy cognitive work (after all, AI can take into account hundreds of thousands of factors – something impossible for humans to do), there’s the danger of lowering human innovation, forgetting (or never bothering to learn) stored knowledge in our brains, and even losing the ability to think critically (in both senses of the word).
A second type of indirect harm would piggyback on a problem already evident before the AI era: non-factual thinking and argumentation. AI can also claim things that don’t exist (“hallucinations”) and/or display “reality” better than it really is (e.g., misleading advertising, deceptive self-presentation, etc.).
Where’s Israel in all this? The picture here too is mixed. On the one hand, Israel is a mini powerhouse in artificial intelligence, with over 2,300 active AI companies. However, the country and its people have had far more pressing things to worry about these past few years than AI-driven un/employment etc. Thus, it lags greatly in any public debate on the issues involved, not to mention Israel’s government and regulatory apparatus that seems to be mostly “missing in action” on this score.
So, if you have a chance to talk to anyone running for Knesset, ask them what’s their position on AI. They will most probably answer: “let me get back to you on that” – and then run off to ask Gemini/ChatGPT/Claude et al for guidance…
At some point, Israel’s leadership will have to address the AI revolution (tsunami?) as it starts making serious inroads in society and the economy. Who will be Israel’s (and the world’s) 21st century Martin Luther? We will soon find out – probably for better and for worse.
