Last week, Congress held an exclusive hearing on artificial intelligence (AI).
The witnesses in the hearing included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, IBM Chief Privacy and Trust Officer Christina Montgomery, and New York University professor Gary Marcus.
After watching the three-hour sideshow, there were three key takeaways about the future of AI and where investors should look. (Hint: Google is on the chopping block.)
First, there won't be any pause in AI development. This past March, Elon Musk and over 27,000 other high-profile thinkers signed an open letter penned by the Future of Life Institute that called for an outright pause in AI development, stating, "Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources."
Leaders in the space fear that a new type of AI, called artificial general intelligence, will pose profound risks to human life as we know it. Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, doesn't exist yet, but it's a theoretical machine that can understand and learn precise human tasks. Think Ava in Ex Machina or Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator. A bit scary, indeed.
Second, we will see an "AI constitution" or "AI bill of rights" very soon. In fact, the White House already published a "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights" last year. In the blueprint, the White House states, "Unchecked social media data collection has been used to threaten people's opportunities, undermine their privacy, or pervasively track their activity - often without their knowledge or consent."
It outlines these five principles for the future use of AI:
"Safe and effective systems: You should be protected from unsafe or ineffective systems.""Algorithmic discrimination protections: You should not face discrimination by algorithms, and systems should be used and designed in an equitable way.""Data privacy: You should be protected from abusive data practices via built-in protections and you should have agency over how data about you is used.""Notice and explanation: You should know that an automated system is being used and understand how and why it contributes to outcomes that impact you.""Human alternatives, consideration, and feedback: You should be able to opt out, where appropriate, and have access to a person who can quickly consider and remedy problems you encounter."These are all a good start, but enforcing these rules will be tricky, hence the lengthy congressional hearing.We're just seeing the tip of the AI iceberg.
Finally, there's a lot of money on the line...
Sen. Josh Hawley, in his closing remarks, said, "Having seen how agencies work in this government, they usually get captured by the interests that they're supposed to regulate. They usually get controlled by the people they're supposed to be watching."
Maybe he's alluding to Nancy Pelosi's stock trades...
But what this means for investors is that Congress is most likely already making money off the trend by trading AI stocks.
So that means we can too.