As artificial intelligence continues to make its way towards global adoption, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has warned that the nascent technology could make it more difficult to spot scams.
In an interview with the BBC, Wozniak revealed that although AI has its positive sides, it’s a technology that bad actors will leverage, calling on industry leaders to impose stringent regulations on AI.
The former Apple man is sceptical that generative AI will completely replace humans, which is a common concern in discussions surrounding the future of this technology. However, Wozniak believes that AI-powered tools could mimic human voices and that bad actors can easily create fraudulent scams and spread them online using large language model programs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“AI is so intelligent it’s open to the bad players, the ones that want to trick you about who they are,” he told the BBC. And although he wants a regulation that would hold accountable big tech firms that, “Feel they can kind of get away with anything,” Wozniak says, “I think the forces that drive for money usually win out, which is sort of sad.”
AI gradually reaching global adoption
Since OpenAI launched its highly talked about ChatGPT last year, various companies and startups have come out and have been releasing unsolicited generative AI systems that can write essays, create code, generate images and answer questions.
Google, Microsoft and Meta are among the tech companies that have launched AI systems of their own to try and lead the nascent technology towards global adoption.
As far as regulations go, more than 1,000 AI, tech and other industry leaders, including Wozniak and Elon Musk, signed a petition to halt the development of AI systems beyond GPT-4 citing “profound risk”.
In the UK, a regulator is set to investigate the increasing use of AI tools like ChatGPT, to determine if users require protection against AI, after recently launching a $100 million AI taskforce.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
