Government (ab)use of AI is is of course a serious threat. But I’d say big corporations abuse of AI is even worse.
Assuming we are talking about a democratic state, at least there are some checks and balances on governments whereas people cannot elect a FAANG CEO or go to a ‘.gov’ website to read a transcript of board meetings.
Edit: I am by no means advocating for government’s use of AI in any form.
A business can't lock you in a prison cell. I'd argue that the checks and balances at this point are little more than a mirage. Ruling by fiat is becoming more common, accountability less so. Government use of AI is far more menacing to me than a business using it.
> Government use of AI is far more menacing to me than a business using it.
I think both are equally menacing. The problem with business usage is that we're "trusting" them to be good stewards of that capability.
There's not much preventing a business from abusing such power in a covert anti-competitive anti-consumer fashion, or worse, selling access to that power to the highest bidder (as a service!).
Perhaps not, but companies can deny you access to fundamental electronic infrastructure, use of which is increasingly essential in a cashless society where services are online or non-existent. With no right of appeal.
Ruling by fiat is becoming more common, accountability less so.
Well, PG&E cut down a whole bunch of trees in my town just recently, against the objections of the locals and the city council. And Judge Alsop, who supervises their bankruptcy chided them for this slap-dash, crude effort to show they were doing thing (didn't stop them, darn it).
So you see a bunch of actions that look like the state or industry acting by fiat. But it only looks that way. The many institutions of this society are at loggerheads with each other, the parties are in gridlock, etc. The main thing is they've shut out the average person from their debates - which is a bit different.
The propensity of leaders to rule by executive order, or cabinet bill is what I'm getting at. Those sorts of actions are most certainly ruling by fiat.
Although private prisons exist (in strikingly small numbers[1]), private corporations can't just decide to throw you into a private prison on a whim; the government decides that.
They're not presently a thing; it's just a scandal that happened at one time in history. It's also corruption, and corruption exists in both the private as well as public sectors. In the case of the Kids for Cash scandal, there have since been lawsuits, overturned adjudications, and commissions to ensure that it doesn't happen again.
Solving corruption is orthogonal to the question of whether private corporations can perform extra-judicial imprisonment with impunity. That really just doesn't happen at scale, because it can't.
Oh, I absolutely do not doubt that it could happen again more often, but at least we have Racketeering laws and a system to essentially minimize the degree to which it happens with impunity.
Of course, but the person who assigns you to that prison is still acting on behalf of the state. It would be correct to say that a business can keep you in a prison though!
Note that these checks and balances don't apply to non-citizens of the country, who are the people affected the use of AI in military (one of the exemptions listed above). If a EU member state abuses AI in the military against a non-European, what direct recourse do they have?
Any governing body seems to leave a lot of room for "except for pigs" when they write down their rules. The bigger the body, the more potential pigs there are.
Government does regulate itself, sometimes. The proposal seems to be concerned with regulating the government, for example limiting "crime prediction". Also, the private institutions it's talking about are things like credit bureaus and employers large enough to use AI for screening employees.
I saw that too, and ended up wondering if it'll be ignored if it's seen that crime prediction falls under the "public safety" exception, from time to time (or eventually, altogether). That's the problem with vague things like "public safety" being tied to regulation, imo.
