To the editor: Bravo to Anita Chabria — and the Los Angeles Times for retaining her as a staff columnist — for sounding such a clear call to the lay public about AI’s most imminent danger (“Wipe out a ‘civilization’? Minor stuff compared with what just happened in AI,” April 10).
Rather than leaving the next step in the hands of the private sector, Congress must recognize, as it has recurrently done in the past, that growth in a new segment of the economy is now so large as to mandate federal oversight and regulation to protect the safety and security of all Americans. That’s the history of congressional oversight of the railroads, the banking industry, finance, commercial aviation and 20th-century telecommunications. That time is here again.
Now is the time for Congress to establish a federal AI regulatory and oversight board similar to the Federal Reserve Board in its broad powers, independence, expert appointees and cream-of-the-crop staff.
To the objection that it is impossible to imagine that occurring in the current political climate, the answer is it is more insane to imagine the alternative.
We don’t get to choose the time and place of our greatest challenges. We only get to choose whether we rise to meet them or not.
David Schulman, Los Angeles
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To the editor: In her recent opinion piece, Chabria said that the problem with Anthropic’s Mythos and other artificial intelligence programs is that “they rarely do what we expect and find sneaky ways around rules. Virtually every AI super-brain created has been shown to lie, deceive, and in general behave in disturbing and unethical ways when put in the right conditions.”
So, in other words, they are teenagers. Let’s hope we are all still here when they grow up.
Curtis Scott, Anderson, Calif.