Episode description

Last month a company in San Francisco called OpenAi released an artificial intelligence system called GPT-4 - a successor to its hugely popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. The latest version can respond to images, write captions and descriptions - processing up to 25,000 words at a time. Researchers claim GPT-4 shows “sparks of artificial general intelligence” - in other words it can match or exceed human capabilities in tasks a person can do.

But there are concerns this latest technology could be used to spread disinformation alongside worries over privacy, jobs and even society itself if more rules aren’t quickly introduced. Key figures in the tech industry - including Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, and Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak - have signed an open letter asking for a pause on “giant AI experiments” so that policymakers can catch up.

There are potentially wide-ranging benefits to these advances. In recently published guidance on the responsible use of AI, the UK government described it as one of the "technologies of tomorrow” contributing £3.7bn ($5.6bn) to the UK economy last year alone.

So what might the social impact of these increasingly powerful AI systems be? If greater regulation is needed, who is responsible? And, if we don’t control it, is there a chance that one day these machines will outsmart and replace us?

Celia Hatton is joined by:

Prof Yoshua Bengio - professor at the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at the Université de Montréal

Boaz Barak - the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University

Lindsay Gorman - a former advisor to the Biden administration on tech strategy. She's currently a Senior Fellow for Emerging Technologies at the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy in Washington DC

Also featuring:

Greg Clark – a Conservative MP and chair of the UK government’s science and technology committee Stuart Russell - Professor of Computer Science at the University of California

Photo: Ai-Da Robot poses for pictures with a self portrait in the Houses of Parliament in London before making history as the first robot to speak at the House of Lords / Credit: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

Produced by Pandita Lorenz and Ellen Otzen