I had a very interesting conversation with Adam Fletcher, the cyber leader of a giant ship, the largest alternative asset manager in the world, which is, for obvious reasons, under all sorts of attacks from hacktivists to cybercriminals who are after money, to nation-state attackers, each with their own agenda. We talked for over an hour, enjoying our smoothies at Joe and The Juice while the Brightline passengers were coming and going, not many of them. We talked about the impact of AI on cybersecurity, how he sees the future of cybersecurity tools, the importance of common sense, and how context is important for understanding if it’s a deepfake or a real human. The team of hackers wouldn’t know the internal dynamics of your organization. You can create secret words in your organizations or for your family. He is not scared, neither as an individual nor as a leader, about the negative impact of AI-generated cyberattacks because when the threat becomes imminent, we will build our defenses, the way we have done throughout history.
I talked about why it’s important to have a global pause on AGI hashtag#GPAGI, and brought up my points that we have to first, as a society, absorb the shock of the impact of AI and then move to AGI.
We also talked about Dolly and GPAGI and referenced Oscars and Oppenheimer. His point was that in reality, we hadn’t had any agreement hardly on the nuclear race. The only handful of global agreements that come to mind are human cloning and chemical weapons, and Adam raised a good point. We have to think about what kind of threat everyone faced and felt that they decided to not only sit around the same table but commit to that.
I think this story resonates with all of us. Whether we are excited about AGI or scared of it, it’s a big unknown for the human species, and there will be a lot of unknowns, unknown unknowns, and unknown unknown unknowns. For example, are we creating potentially a being, an intelligent being more intelligent than us that has rights or one that has no legal rights? Are we creating a super-smart slave for ourselves, or are we creating a super-smart master? And in either case, our history has shown that we have done both, and in both cases, it didn’t end very well.
The photos are from downtown Miami, where the blends of fast-growing high rises are built every day while roosters are roaming around to show that we are a hyper-grown village. A village full of contrasts created through waves of newcomers sharing this piece of paradise with peacefulness.
The question is if we can continue this peaceful coexistence with AI.