Artificial intelligence (AI) can make it much harder to spot scams, warned Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. He believes that bad actors can use AI to make it more difficult to detect scams and misinformation. Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with the late Steve Jobs, is credited with being the brains behind the company’s first computer.
In an interview with the BBC, Wozniak called for regulation of the AI sector and said that AI content should be “clearly labelled”. In March, he was one of the leading tech gurus who signed a letter calling for a six-month pause in the development of powerful AI systems. The letter, which was also signed by Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk, stated that AI services such as ChatGPT could have “potentially catastrophic consequences for society”.
In response, the Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP) filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. The accusation was that OpenAI’s GPT-4 model violated federal consumer protection laws and posed serious risks to society.
Wozniak told the BBC that “AI is so intelligent that it opens up to the bad actors, the ones who want to mislead you about who they are.” He does not think that AI will want to replace humans, because it has no emotions. However, Wozniak believes that AI will make adversaries relatively more persuasive, as programs like ChatGPT can create text that “sounds very intelligent”.
Wozniak believes that people should ultimately take responsibility for their creations. He said that those who use AI-created content and prod publishing results should be held accountable for everything that comes out of it. Further, Wozniak said it’s very important that big tech is held accountable, even if they “feel like they can get away with anything”. He doubts whether the regulators would be successful in this mission, however, as he believes that “the forces that are after money usually win and that’s a bit sad”.
