As concerns for AI’s rapid growth circulate among almost every industry, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, contributors on the 2020 Netflix documentary-drama film “The Social Dilemma,” warn there is no “pull[ing] the plug” on the technology in an upcoming interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt.
In an exclusive clip of the interview shared with TheWrap, which airs Wednesday on “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” as part of NBC News’ ongoing “A.I. Revolution” series, Harris warns that the technology’s widespread evolution is happening so quickly that even the experts can’t keep up.
“The CEOs of the big AI labs are saying they can’t even keep up with the pace because people are inventing new improvements so much faster than their own understanding,” Harris tells Holt in the clip.
Holt then asks Harris if technology could be slowed down with human intervention, posing “But doesn’t a person ultimately control it, can I simply just pull the plug? Literally and figuratively.”
While Harris shares that a common misconception is that labs can “just pull the plug” on AI, both the technology and how its growing throughout the industry doesn’t make for a simple solution.
“Unfortunately, this is being decentralized into more and more hands so that technology isn’t just run inside of one company that you can’t just say ‘I want to pull the plug on Google,’ [and] also think about how hard it would be to pull the plug on Google or pull the plug on Microsoft,” Harris says.
You can watch the full clip above.
