Why? Because if I’m not right then I am convinced that AI is going to be a force for evil. It will power scams on an unimaginable scale. It will destabilize labor at a speed that will make the Industrial Revolution seem like a gentle breeze. It will concentrate immense power and wealth in the hands of people who I don’t trust. And it will do all of this while consuming truly shocking amounts of energy.
Not only do I think these things will happen, I think the Altmans of the world would eagerly agree that they will happen. They just think it will be interesting / profitable for them. It won’t be for us.
And we, the engineers, are in a unique position. Unlike people in any other industry, we can affect the trajectory of AI. My skepticism (and unwillingness to aid in the advancement of AI) might slow things down a billionth of a percent. Maybe if there are more of me, things will slow down enough that we can find some sort of effective safeguards on this stuff before it’s out of hand.
So I’ll keep being skeptical, until it’s over.
It may get worse. Imagine the police using AI to interpret evidence against you, get judged by a court that uses AI to write your sentence, based on laws that were also written by AI. Nobody understands this, just listen to the AI.
The other aspect of this is the flood of inane and untrue content. It may go to such an extent that the outlook of the typical person may become incredibly local again, limited to their immediate surroundings and personal experiences, not by choice, but because there won't be any way to obtain any reliable information about the outside world, with no way to sift the real from the unreal.