AI is all over the news today, and its short term impacts have not been trivial. Google rolled out an AI product that made a factual error, and its parent company stock price dropped 9%, temporarily wiping out $100B of market value. And there are a myriad of risks beyond factual errors, with a mix of probability and consequences. Much has been made of the fact that over 100 million people have tried ChatGPT in its first two months of public exposure. And that's just one product, in one branch, of a range of new products called Generative Artificial Intelligence!
So, is it time to crawl under a rock? Will some machine come looking for me one day soon, because I disrespected the potential of AI systems? What are the newly arriving benefits or risks of these technologies? What frameworks can we use, as business and society leaders, to think through the coming tradeoffs? We'll talk about work, jobs, risks, benefits, privacy, security, existential threats, weapons gone rogue, and the like. We'll also talk about regulation, and the proposed 6-month "pause" on new AI development to provide time to get "guardrails" around AI products. And without a doubt, the landscape of what we know and plan for today will be different in August, in June, and likely even tomorrow!
Paul Witman (Ph.D.) is a Professor of Information Technology Management, in California Lutheran University’s School of Management. His research interests include social networking for non-profits, information security, usability, health care information, and electronic banking and finance. Prior to joining Cal Lutheran, Dr. Witman served as Director of Integration Engineering for Digital Insight Corp. and as Director of Global Delivery Systems at Citibank. He earned his Ph.D. in Information Systems and Technology from Claremont Graduate University.
