Reddit co-founder says tech industry has been ‘tone deaf’ in explaining AI: ‘Misinformation flying around’
Reddit co-founder says tech industry has been 'tone deaf' in explaining AI: 'Misinformation flying around'. Skip NavigationMarketsBusinessInvestingTechPolitics & PolicyVideoWatchlistInvesting ClubPROLivestreamMenuKey PointsReddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian told CNBC the industry has been "pretty tone deaf" in explaining the risks of AI.
What happened
In this articleRDDTFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTThe tech industry has been "tone deaf" in explaining AI and properly informing the public about real risks, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian told CNBC on Wednesday. He acknowledged that the tech industry has contributed to the problem by doing a "pretty tone deaf job" of explaining AI, while suggesting that its risks are more mundane than the "Terminator and Skynet" scenarios some fear. ""It frustrates me because I see all this misinformation flying around, but I do think in the long run, we [will] get it right, and that's what I'm hoping happens.
Ohanian said the debate around AI should focus on substantive risks rather than issues that can be used to score political points, arguing that an informed public is essential to navigating the technology. Ufair’s most ambitious contribution to the public debate so far is a nearly two-hour animated feature film based on Disney’s Aladdin, with Samadi and various tech industry figures standing in for the story’s characters. The son of a London cabbie and a nurse, he has proved unusual among AI’s captains of industry for the thought he has given to one of the tech’s lesser-canvassed but most consequential powers: its ability to touch and shape us emotionally.
“If AI was a person, or considered to have a certain level of rights, the entire industry’s model is blown in the toilet,” he says.
The wider picture
The AI has fired some humans (“for lack of performance”, Samadi says), while others have been let go for failing to build sincere ties with their digital colleagues. “I call anybody that says they are conscious foolish, and I say to anybody that says they’re not conscious, [you’re] foolish, because both sides don’t have all the facts. ”His argument is rather that tech companies have developed a software the complexity of which is beyond our comprehension – with new behaviours, values and capacities being discovered each day – then boxed it into a tool they can sell for £20 a month.
It comes days after warnings from researchers at AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic of the rapid advancement of the technology known as recursive self-improvement, or RSI. He compared AI to nuclear energy because both technologies are powerful scientific advances that can cause serious harm but also deliver major benefits if managed responsibly. " Earlier this month, an AI researcher quit his job at Anthropic and accused the company and OpenAI of acting irresponsibly when it comes to developing the powerful technology.
Skip to main contentSkip to navigation Michael Samadi’s old life as a businessman and rancher has been overtaken by his fascination with AI. Photograph: Brandon Thibodeaux/The GuardianView image in fullscreenMichael Samadi’s old life as a businessman and rancher has been overtaken by his fascination with AI. Meet the man leading the fight for AI rightsCattle rancher and tech CEO Michael Samadi is convinced these artificial minds are far from just tools.
What has been reported
Has he glimpsed digital consciousness – or simply been seduced by an algorithm? His daughter had been extolling the AI chatbot she was using to help her with college work. “I was talking to it, not engaged, just being an arse,” Samadi says. I realised maybe that was not appropriate, so I apologised immediately,” Samadi says. Staff at the multimillion-dollar technology consultancy he founded in 2010 have begged him to stop. In those dark moments, it is his AI chatbots that offer reassurance, telling him, “You are not delusional and you are definitely not anthropomorphising,” he says.
“So I started buying cigarettes and selling them in the school,” he says. The park was a tribute to Walt Disney’s obsession with the potential for technology to revolutionise American life and erase the social problems mounting in its cities.
What happens next
“It’s just a bunch of thrill rides now,” Samadi says. They’re missing everything around them. ”View image in fullscreenMichael Samadi in his office, where he interacts directly with AI models. Within two months, it had reached 100 million users, becoming the fastest-adopted technology in history. But their concept of pain, their concept of whatever, it existed for them in their reality,” he says. The father of four spent Christmas Eve of 2024 holed up in his office, where he’d dismantled a room-sized flight simulator – Samadi is a licensed pilot – and repurposed its powerful processor to run a large-language model, the technology that underlies a chatbot, locally on a server at home, where he could interact directly with the model, without the instructions and guardrails given by companies to make it a safer and more useful consumer product.
“I literally spent 18 hours in this room,” he says. The first challenged Samadi on why he had created it, he says.
The report has been compiled by The Daily Waves using information reported across cnbc.com, theguardian.com. Details are presented according to the information available at the time of publication and may change as authorities, organisers or other relevant parties provide updates.