Whistle-blower Edward Snowden has warned of governments and corporations trying to wrest control of artificial intelligence, potentially rendering the fast-developing technology less useful.
“We are witnessing the birth of a child with an entirely new fresh technology, and already we are seeing the werewolves beginning to circle,” Snowden told the SuperAI event in Singapore via a video call on Wednesday.
Governments around the world, including the US, are working on their regulatory approach to AI after popular services such as ChatGPT laid bare the technology’s potential. The EU passed a sweeping law that would put guardrails on the technology, while in China no company can produce an AI service without proper approvals.
“The AI safety panic in general is something I have a problem with,” said Snowden, who unveiled the US government’s global spying efforts more than a decade ago.
The advent of generative AI has triggered a furious debate in Silicon Valley and beyond about the dangers the technology poses to humanity, starting with misinformation and privacy violations. Its advocates argue that the technology should be allowed to flourish naturally.
Snowden raised concerns about the growing control major tech platform owners such as Google have over AI content. The risk is that people try to “inject their politics into powerful models and impose them”, he said.
However, the 40-year-old fugitive predicted that attempts to control AI eventually won’t succeed because the technology evolves too rapidly, with new innovations emerging constantly. “They will build a dam around us, but we have to make sure it doesn’t stop our flow,” he said.
‘Defy consensus’
Once a US National Security Agency IT contractor, Snowden leaked highly classified information about the US’s international surveillance programmes before fleeing to Russia in 2013. He was granted Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin in 2022.
Snowden has kept most of his private life in Russia away from public attention, but he has been active on X, formerly known as Twitter. His posts have touched various topics, from messages in support of fellow whistle-blower Julian Assange to the elevated inflation in the US. In an apparent comment about the New York Stock Exchange’s technical glitch on Monday, he tweeted “bitcoin fixes this”.
In Singapore, Snowden signed off urging the audience to not “be afraid to defy consensus. It might get you in trouble, but you’ll be much closer to being right.” — Gao Yuan and Suvashree Ghosh, (c) 2024 Bloomberg LP
