Partnering with an Authoritarian Regime
When a company says it’s exporting freedom, check the fine print.
OpenAI is building billion-dollar data centers around the world, promising each country its own version of ChatGPT, customized for local language and culture. They call it “democratic AI.”
Their first partner? The United Arab Emirates. A country the US State Department classifies as authoritarian.
The Myth of “Democratic AI” asks what no one wants to answer: When you customize technology for a government that doesn’t protect free speech, are you democratizing anything? Or just making censorship and control more efficient?
For more on this, read our excerpt from “Rewiring Democracy” by Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders.
I’m curious where you land on this. Share your thoughts in the comments.
—Sharon McMahon, Editor-in-Chief
P.S. We’re working on a series about healthcare in America for next week’s issue of The Preamble. We’re looking at insurance, access, costs, the whole system, and I need your stories. Send us a letter about what you’ve experienced or what you wish people understood.
AI has the potential for being a good thingif used in the right way but like with so many other things that start out as being good and helpful, in the hands of unscrupulous people , it becomes tools of evil, thus requiring some form of governing it to protect the innocent.
I agree with the above comments but also add that lawmakers and leaders in corporations have an obligation to fully understand how to use AI for the good. And to anticipate how to protect the American people from bad use of it. They need to do their homework and not wait until something bad happens.