The era of corporate control in AI is dawning

Big Tech firms now dominate the development and control of state-of-the-art AI, dictating how to handle risks and opportunities in the field.

According to the 2023 AI Index, which was compiled by researchers from Stanford University and several AI companies including Google, Anthropic, and Hugging Face, corporate players are increasingly dominating the deployment and safeguarding of AI applications, surpassing academia and government in this regard. The report suggests that AI is entering a new phase of development, where many AI tools have gone mainstream, but decisions about deploying the technology and balancing risk and opportunity are firmly in the hands of industry players.

Academia used to lead the way in developing state-of-the-art AI systems, but industry has now taken over due to the high resource demands required to create such applications. In 2022, industry produced 32 significant machine learning models compared to just three produced by academia. However, this shift in power towards corporate players raises concerns about dangerous outcomes as companies rush out products and sideline safety concerns in an effort to outmaneuver rivals. As a result, many experts in the AI world are calling for a slowdown or even a pause in AI development.

Moreover, as AI applications become more mainstream, the number of incidents of ethical misuse has increased. The report notes that incidents include fatalities involving Tesla's self-driving software, the use of audio deepfakes in corporate scams, the creation of nonconsensual deepfake nudes, and numerous cases of mistaken arrests caused by faulty facial recognition software, which is often plagued by racial biases. However, interest in AI regulation from legislators and policymakers is increasing, and the number of bills containing the phrase "artificial intelligence" passed in 127 countries has increased from one in 2016 to 37 in 2022.

The report also covers other areas, such as the decrease in private investment in AI for the first time in a decade, the environmental costs of training big AI models, and the potential for AI to help reduce emissions. Additionally, an Ipsos survey found that Chinese citizens were most optimistic about AI, followed by respondents in Saudi Arabia and India, while US respondents were among the least optimistic.