The overnight success of ChatGPT and GPT-4 marks a clear turning point for artificial intelligence. It also marks an inflection point for public discourse about the risks and benefits of AI for our society. Practitioners, policymakers and pundits alike have voiced loud concerns, ranging from fear of a potential flood of AI-generated disinformation to the existential risks of superhuman intelligence whose goals may not align with humanity’s best interests.
The speed of AI advances is now measured in days and weeks, while government regulation generally takes years or even decades—to wit, we still don’t have a federal privacy law after more than 20 years of public discussion. Record levels of lobbying by the tech industry have lined the pockets of Washington influence peddlers and ground the gears of technology regulation to a halt, even though distrust of big tech is as bipartisan an issue as they come.
