AI grows up without rules

The artificial intelligence industry is getting nothing but green lights in all directions — now it needs to deliver on its promises.The big picture: AI makers are getting everything they have ever asked for or could possibly want.1. No limits: More money, energy and resources are flowing into the technology's development than any other industry has ever received in such a concentrated timespan.Four companies — Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon — expect to spend more than $300 billion this year on AI, while private investors and governments pour hundreds of billions more into AI infrastructure.Public and private projects are rushing to supply the vast energy inputs AI development and use requires. A Pittsburgh summit featuring President Trump last week made clear that the emphasis will be on fossil fuels and nuclear, with little regard for climate concerns or environmental costs.2. No rules: In the second Trump era, the U.S. has dropped any pretense of trying to erect regulatory guardrails around AI.Trump's AI "action plan" coming this week will instead promote speedy deployment to counter China.The "doomer" camp's fear that runaway superintelligence might destroy humanity is no longer even a part of the policy conversation.3. No arguments: Gung-ho CEOs and businesses are pushing AI use on sometimes resistant workforces and a skeptical public, telling hesitaters to get on the AI train or get left behind.The phenomenal popularity of ChatGPT and its competitors suggests there's tons of demand for these tools.But surveys also show the U.S. public fears and distrusts AI and favors a more careful approach to its adoption.4. No doubts: Business leaders and policy makers have successfully sidelined critical questions about harms from AI bias and misuse, privacy violations and appropriation of intellectual property.If you point out that today's AI is inefficient, untrustworthy and unstable, they will say "just wait till next year's model."The new technology is being promoted as a race to "superintelligence" where the winner will reap enormous — but unspecified — rewards.Why it matters: All these green lights are flashing at a critical juncture in the development of AI.Today's large language models are changing at high speed as giant datacenters come online, researchers apply new techniques, companies plug the new tools into their workflows and software developers build bridges between AI and the existing digital world.That means AI's formative era is right now — and the technology is developing with almost total freedom.Our thought bubble: AI makers liken the process of training models to raising children. If that's true, the technology is growing up as a fabulously rich kid in a wildly permissive household.Yes, but: Now that the world has said yes to every ask the AI makers have made, it's "put up or shut up" time for the new technology.AI champions predict a utopian cornucopia of benefits just beyond the horizon: Massive boosts to productivity and economic growth! Miracle drugs and cures for cancer! Personalized tutors for every student and PhD-level interns for every company!"If we get this right, AI can give everyone more power than ever," Fidji Simo, OpenAI's new CEO of applications, wrote in a blog post yesterday — though she also admits that these benefits "won't magically appear on their own."In fact, though, today they remain largely hypothetical, while the technology's costs pile higher.The bottom line: ChatGPT will hit its three-year anniversary this fall. Since its arrival, AI leaders have been confidently forecasting that the massive breakthrough of a "singularity"-style superintelligence is a mere year or two away.This technological event-horizon has remained steadily distant as years have passed. But the industry can't play the "nirvana is just a few years off" card forever.

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