Maybe it was the title of the book Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI, or the imposing red lighting surrounding Firth Hall that left me imagining a certain HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the journey throughout the known and unknown universes of our own evolving relationship with Artificial Intelligence was a sobering one, to say the least.
Author Madhumita Murgia began by reading a passage from her book, an introduction to data-labellers who spend their time describing and highlighting images for the sole purpose of training these developing technologies yet being blissfully unaware of what their work is inevitably to be used for. “She is far removed from the final product” explains Murgia, on her search to find people “who have been impacted by these systems”.
Murgia went on to explain that the rate of change in artificial technology development is far outstripping the rate of innovation in many other industries of the past or present, often hearing in Silicon Valley “we need to go as fast as possible”, in what conjures images of white-coated men hurrying around in a dark lab somewhere. And the reality is not far removed. “There was an underlying thread…[a] clear concentration of power” in the development of these technologies, one that sees a few companies and individuals standing for disproportionate benefit from such a small group.
With two of this week’s Nobel Prize winners using AI to aid their research, Murgia urges audiences and readers to take a step back and evaluate those being harmed by this surging technology, from small businesses, to artists and creatives, and to the data-labellers themselves, who must sit through graphic and extreme content to ensure it is optimally labelled for the technological overlords. She posits that we must “bring more plurality into the debate” to avoid being washed away by the tide of five highly influential voices.
I found Murgia’s talk to be interesting, but occasionally lacked development further than arguments that are well-known and discussed in public discourse. The overall theme as I understood it, that AI isn’t an inherently evil technology but one that needs significant regulation and careful monitoring during its progression, does not appear to be a particularly novel approach or judgement to make, and I feel that a lot of the event was taken up by this, rather than delving deeper into the issues and realities behind his.
Murgia explained at the beginning of her talk that this is not a book about AI per se, or technology, but about evolution, human development and how we are working with AI in our lives and are being shaped by it. But my argument would be that this Off the Shelf event spoke too heavily on technology for it to be true, and less on how AI is developing us, but how often disadvantaged individuals are shaping it. Nevertheless, it was an interesting event and a thought-provoking one, that makes even the thought of ChatGPT ever more sinister…
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI was published in March 2024. Other Off the Shelf Festival events can be found here
