Samuel is an artificial intelligence (AI) scientist and professor, leading the Master of Public Informatics programs at Bloustein, Rutgers University. Samuel is also a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.
As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies cross over a vital threshold of competitiveness with human intelligence, it is necessary to properly frame critical questions in the service of shaping policy and governance while sustaining human values and identity. Given AI’s vast socioeconomic implications, government actors and technology creators must proactively address the unique and emerging ethical concerns that are inherent to AI’s many uses.
Open Source versus Black Box AI Technologies
AI can be viewed as an adaptive “set of technologies that mimic the functions and expressions of human intelligence, specifically cognition, and logic.” In the AI field, foundation models (FMs) are more or less what they sound like: large, complex models that have been trained on vast quantities of digital general information that may then be adapted for more specific uses.
Two notable features of foundation models include a propensity to gain new and often unexpected capabilities as they increase in scale (“emergence”), and a growing predisposition to serve as a common “intelligence base” for differing specialized functions and AI applications (“homogenization”). Large language models (LLMs) that power applications like ChatGPT are foundation models with a focus on modeling human language, knowledge, and logic. Advanced AIs and foundation models have the potential to replace multiple task-specific or narrow AIs due to their scale and flexibility, which increases the risk of a few powerful persons or entities who control these advanced AIs gaining extraordinary socioeconomic power, creating conditions for mass exploitation and abuse.
ChatGPT and other large language model applications, that are growing in popularity, use a nontransparent “black box” approach; users of these technologies have little to no access to the inner workings or underlying AI models and can only observe outputs (such as an essay) that result from data inputs (such as a written or spoken prompt) to judge how these applications function. Such opaque foundation models have widespread future AI application potential, displaying homogenization where the base models can be adapted to serve a range of specialized purposes. These exponentials are the risks inherent in a system that allows for private control of advanced AIs. Open-source initiatives, on the other hand, prioritize transparency and public availability of the AI models, including code, process, relevant data, and documentation, so that users and society at large have an opportunity to understand how these technologies function.
For human society, the spirit of the open-source movement is one of the most valuable forces at play in the AI technologies arena. Research and development of AI ethics must emphasize the contributions of open data, open-source software, open knowledge, and responsible AI movements, and contrast these with the challenges presented by relatively opaque AI applications. Closely coupled with open-source, the open-data movement (which refers to “data that is made freely available for open consumption, at no direct cost to the public, which can be efficiently located, filtered, downloaded, processed, shared, and reused without any significant restrictions on associated derivatives, use, and reuse”) can be a significant contributor to the development of responsible AI. Open-source initiatives distribute power and reduce the likelihood of centralized control and abuse by a few AI owners with concentrated power.
Questioning AI Ethics to Inform Regulatory Processes
Drawing from the open-source movement’s prioritization of transparency, decentralization, fairness, liberty, and empowerment to the people, responses to the following five questions should be required of all companies creating opaque AI applications such as ChatGPT.
Is it fair to use an opaque black-box approach for AI technologies when the implications and impacts of complex AI technologies posit many significant risks? The consequences of AIs are great and must be associated with proportionately higher levels of accountability. The volatile impacts of AIs are expected to be exponentially greater over time than past technologies. Therefore, for human society, it would be relatively less risky in the long run for companies to embrace the open-source approach which has already demonstrated the critical value of transparency and open availability of source materials.
If building upon valuable, free, good-faith open-source research, is it then morally correct to build opaque black boxes for private profit? Significant open-source contributions, made in good faith, have laid the foundations for the present-day AIs. Many of the technological modules, such as transformers, used within applications like ChatGPT came from open-source research. Having reaped the benefits of open-source, privatization of critical AI models blocks societal innovation opportunities and even if presently legally permissible, should be considered ethically wrong.
Why should for-profit companies be allowed to deprive people of their right to know all specific details about what data an AI (that they are expected to use, compete against, and perhaps even be subject to in the future) has been developed with? Large language models are trained on vast quantities of data—in the interests of public benefit and transparency, all data “ingredients” used for training must be detailed in a testable manner. If the specific texts on which GPT3,4 /ChatGPT have been trained remain largely undisclosed, it would be difficult for the public or governments to audit for the fair use of data; to gauge if restricted, protected, private or confidential data have been used; and to see if a company has added synthetic data or performed other manipulations causing the AI to present biased views on critical topics. All training data must be declared in real-time.
Why should companies not be held responsible for transparency and be compelled to demonstrate the absence of deliberate bias mechanisms and output-manipulating systems within their applications? Combining complex, risk-inducing, hidden AI technologies with the opacity of data use gives “emergence” to the potential rise and spread of manipulative AIs. Companies must be required to show that their AIs provide a fair and unbiased representation of information, and they must be held responsible to prove in real-time that they are indeed reflecting “facts as they are.” The absence of protections for the public will potentially facilitate mass manipulation of users—consider a future filled with powerful mind-bending manipulative AIs under the control of a few of the self-declared elites.
Why should for-profit AIs not be regulated by enhanced AI-appropriate laws and policies for consumer protection? ChatGPT Plus was released at $20 per month for privileged access in February of 2023. For a company that started as a “nonprofit to develop AI” with a self-declared purpose to “ benefit humanity as a whole,” this rush to monetization can appear opportunistic and shortsighted. When an AI is presented as a commercial product, the company profiting from this product should be held liable for full transparency and all the output the AI produces, and companies should not be allowed to actively or passively coerce users (again) into signing away all their fair rights. Governments must break the habit of acting only after powerful companies and wealthy investors have ensured positive returns on investment, and companies must be challenged to develop profit models which accommodate full transparency of methods and data.
Fear of abuse or global security concerns are feeble excuses for hiding general-purpose scientific discoveries, building opacity, and creating black boxes. Instead of waiting for harm to occur, governments must be proactive; for example, if large language model applications had been covered by proactive AI regulations before ChatGPT’s launch, we would be able to use the technology more confidently and increase productivity with informed concerns on bias, limitations, and manipulation. Monetization and positive return on investment are important and it is necessary to have sustainable business models with some level of opacity of final production systems. However, given the nature and power of AI technologies, utmost care must be taken to provide open availability of AI foundation models and training data and to ensure transparency, fairness, accountability, application of open-source principles, and adoption of responsible AI practices.
Supporting the integration of open data and AI, along with proactive policies built on the principles of the open-source movement, will serve as a sustainable value-creation strategy to ensure that the benefits of AI are truly disbursed equitably to all people. Using a framework derived from the open-source movement will ensure an optimal measure of public power over artificial intelligence, and lead to a much-needed improvement in accountability and responsible behavior by companies and governments who “own” these technologies.
Old engraved illustration of Ulysses defying the Cyclops.
Odysseus Reimagined: Nolan’s Epic Explores What Makes a True Hero
Who is a hero? More importantly: what is a hero? What attributes are universally admired, inspiring glorious stories, ballads and songs, memorials and movies, all chronicling the hero’s bold adventures?
The Odyssey, a new release written and directed by Christopher Nolan, attempts to answer that question. Based on the ancient tales The Iliad and The Odyssey, written by Homer around 800 BC, the film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope, his loyal wife.
Historians have puzzled over the “Homeric question,” that is, who was Homer? We know very little about him, not even when or where he was born; seven Greek cities lay claim to him as their native son. Yet, he is considered the “godfather” of national Greek culture, and his stories are among the earliest masterpieces of literature.
Homer is sometimes romanticized as a blind poet who wandered from town to town reciting his stories. But he, who could express so poignantly the tribulations of Odysseus, was not blind to human nature. He keenly wrote of the attributes as well as the paltriness in his characters and the flaws of his great hero, Odysseus.
The Iliad is the story of the final years of the Trojan War, sparked when Helen, the beautiful wife of Sparta’s King Menelaus, was kidnapped by Paris of Troy. Because the kings had initiated a pact to defend one another, Odysseus was drawn into the fray.
After spending ten years fighting the Trojan War and finally achieving victory, The Odyssey tells of Odysseus’s struggle to return to his kingdom, Ithaca. On his way home, he encounters many dangers and delays. He is pursued by the sea-god Poseidon, must surmount Circe’s spell, and overcome the seductive charms of the enchantress Calypso, and his journey takes him another ten years.
Odysseus’s desires and struggles are universal: his longing for home, yearning for an end to his troubles, for rest after a long and difficult journey. His difficulties reflect the immemorial questions of what it means to be loyal, to belong, what it means “to be” at all. Despite his hubris, which manifests in his propensity to court catastrophe without regard for consequences, Odysseus is an authentic hero, noble and admirable, brave and dedicated.
According to the Greek ideal, a true hero must possess physical excellence and moral virtue. He must, as well, embrace his civic duty. Achieving such status requires “paideia,” a good education; “sophrosyne,” moderation in maintaining physical and emotional balance; and “arete,” an allegiance to the state.
Fictional or real, heroes’ deeds resonate through the centuries and shine a light on what is best in humanity, what matters, what will live on despite our mortality.
Is our digital age really so different from Homer’s Bronze Age? Physical beauty is still adulated, as it was then with Helen of Troy, “the face that launched a thousand ships.” (Marlowe) Power is still king, and wealth is still power.
The years of the Trojan War were harsh and violent. But were they more brutal than the times we live in? Although millenniums have passed and we now have different battlefields, Palestine, Ukraine, Iran, etc., the ravages and the wages of war remain the same: death and suffering. Humanity’s currency is the same, and so, too, is our quest for heroes.
Social scientists claim that after three generations most people are forgotten by even their direct progeny, and after four, remembered only by historical records. So, what then does last? What makes a difference? What is truly beautiful and worthwhile in life?
The universal themes embodied and emboldened by our heroes throughout the ages, the faithfulness of their hearts and the courage of their deeds, these last.
The essential qualities of a hero are manifested in Homer’s Odysseus. Steadfast integrity: “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.” His deep compassion: “Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for others’ good, and to melt at others’ woes.” (Both quotes from The Odyssey.)
Nolan’s movie may have created a more virtuous hero than Homer’s works, but the core of the nearly 3,000-year-old-story is intact and as crucially relevant today as it was then. It is the stuff of life: trauma, survival, relationships with others, finding oneself, deciding what is right, choosing a path forward, sometimes, ultimately leading to the honing of a hero.
Just as Odysseus braved storms, temptations, and trials in search of home, we too face a modern sea of civic turbulence, polarization, mistrust, and the fraying of our shared story.
As we live, we too will write our defining stories. How then might we become modern heroes?
By instigating the third Greek ideal of “arete”; embracing our civic duty. By becoming citizens who are open to reflection and debate, who are willing to act with purpose for the betterment of our nation.
In this journey, the work of renewing our democracy can be its own Odyssey, a voyage calling for integrity, courage, and steadfast commitment. Not to return home as Odysseus so desired, but to preserve our home, for the grand and worthwhile purpose of working toward an ever-better future for our country.
With others, we can shape the next chapter of our nation’s collective story.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."