Preventing an AI arms race: open research
Secrecy is the halt of humanity's progress
I’ve noticed a trend in the AI research field, and one I feel pretty proud to talk about.
Given the latest advancements, even if there is or there is not a plateau in research in these next years, means that there is definitely a technological advance to nations or corporations that have the first step into new revolutionary AI. I am not talking about the new Skynet (although some people suggest it), but rather who gets the head start that creates the new vicious cycle. Those where our regulations are not enough to keep up, and we need to rethink what our laws are regarding economy, or military, or ethics.
We’ve all head the concerns on military self-driving attack drones. We’ve all heard the concerns about life-or-death decision taking self-driving cars. We’ve all heard and watched the theories, movies and games that revamp the Turing Test and want us to reconsider how deep we are in the rabbit hole.
And Musk’s OpenAI platform was a first response to that, with a clear strategy: make advancements available for everyone. The real strategy behind OpenAI is that when the time comes for that tipping point, such information will be available to everyone, enhancing competition and leveling up risks of a company/nation taking advantage. Of course, you might agree that this is a very complex problem and claiming that this is a simple solution that works is really oversimplifying the situation.
But it is, without a doubt, a clever one.
Very recently, researches raised up their voice against opacity in research journals, which is another example of this tendency. I share the thought that research and technological advance should be benefit for all of humanity. Not only because it will prevent unfairness, but also will benefit us all. Is there any good reason to willfully keep other organizations/nations behind in technological advance? Ethically speaking, none.
I very much like this new tendency, and as we’ve seen non-profit software foundations rise successfully in the past few decades, this might be the right time to make knowledge a concern for all of humanity.