Mustapha Suleyman says we must "contain" future AI development. The victorious Hollywood writers' strikers just did it
From Polygon
In a New Yorker review of Brian Merchant’s book on the legacy of the Luddites today, it concludes:
In the era of A.I., we have another opportunity to decide whether automation will create advantages for all, or whether its benefits will flow only to the business owners and investors looking to reduce their payrolls. One 1812 letter from the Luddites described their mission as fighting against “all Machinery hurtful to Commonality.” That remains a strong standard by which to judge technological gains.
Is Mustapha Suleyman a Luddite, in this sense? He is certainly urging—from his heartland position within cutting-edge development of AI—for “containment” of its powers, to the extent that it is “Machinery hurtful to Commonality”. That’s his position as revealed by this interview with the Centre for Humane Technology’s podcast Your Undivided Attention (embed below):
From the show blurb:
This is going to be the most productive decade in the history of our species, says Mustafa Suleyman, author of “The Coming Wave,” CEO of Inflection AI, and founder of Google’s DeepMind. But in order to truly reap the benefits of AI, we need to learn how to contain it. Paradoxically, part of that will mean collectively saying no to certain forms of progress. As an industry leader reckoning with a future that’s about to be ‘turbocharged’ Mustafa says we can all play a role in shaping the technology in hands-on ways and by advocating for appropriate governance.
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But there’s a very strong argument that the Hollywood writers’ strike has “shaped [AI] technology in hands-on ways”, as Suleyman puts it. According to the Wired report:
…The deal struck this week between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) will go some way toward protecting writers against AI’s impact.
In short, the contract stipulates that AI can’t be used to write or rewrite any scripts or treatments; ensures that studios will disclose if any material given to writers is AI-generated; and protects writers from having their scripts used to train AI without their say-so.
Provisions in the contract also stipulate that script scribes can use AI for themselves. At a time when people in many professions fear that generative AI is coming for their jobs, the WGA’s new contract has the potential to be precedent-setting, not just in Hollywood, where the actors’ strike continues, but in industries across the US and the world.
“In this contract, we have done what no other union could,” says John August, a member of the union’s negotiating committee and writer of Charlie’s Angels. “For the first time, we have put enforceable definitions and limits on the use of AI. That's going to have a huge impact on writers' daily lives.”
…The terms, on paper at least, are a coup for writers. Beyond putting up guardrails to ensure AI can’t replace script writers outright, they also curb the more likely scenario—that writers would be asked to adapt or edit something written by a large language model or tool like ChatGPT, for less pay than producing an original work, possibly without their knowledge. (That transparency is enshrined too.)
“That’s a crisis in our compensation, it’s a crisis in our residuals, and a crisis in our artistic ability to do the things we are put in this industry to do,” August said on that point back in May. (AMPTP had initially offered “annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology” rather than specific stipulations about AI’s use.)
More here. Are elements of this deal, guaranteeing human primacy in places like writers’ rooms and rewrites of scripts, mappable over to other industries?
In this interview with Yuval Noah Harari for the Economist, Suleyman predicts that we will have AI in less than five years that actively executes business and organisational plans - calls suppliers, negotiates prices - and doesn’t just cleverly answer questions put to them.
Will humans defend their rights to be project-managers and bureaucrats, with the same zeal as creative writers were doing for their originality and authorship? We wonder…