Ask the hard questions. I’m not afraid to say, “I don’t know.” Turns out, I don’t know everything. I think I already confessed to that when I told ya’ll I went through a kind of modified ECON 101 this summer.
What I do know is that for every action we plan to take, we ought to adopt a process. Something that we can rely on to evaluate new information and make decisions moving forward.
As Chair of the SCLP’s state committee, my process has been to listen to all the sides and then to discuss with my executive committee what options are available. We confer, we weigh pros and cons, and we commit, together, to the best course of action. My job is to decide, announce, and take responsibility for the decision.
In a recent small-group conversation at Lizard’s Thicket in Forest Acres, someone asked about AI. What do I think of it? I think it’s changing everything right now, in real time. Follow-up question: what can we do to prepare?
In another conversation, this one with Stand With Crypto SC Chapter President Jonathan Dunsmoor, we talked about the wide and deep and sometimes dark world of the internet. Jonathan pointed out that when the internet first came around, we didn’t do much to regulate or boundary it. We’re regretting that decision now.
Whenever you see prompts about accepting cookies, or websites asking to confirm you’re 21 before showing you whiskey, that’s government regulation. There are much stricter boundaries in the European Union regarding everything from who’s allowed to view what to how the backend of the internet is amassing data.
It’s the data collection that we ought to have gotten ahead of. But we didn’t. And by we, I mean the Americans represented by our government agencies whose mandates of oversight are sometimes woefully inadequate. Or ignored. Or sidestepped. Or downright paid off with campaign contributions.
So what does all of this have to do with AI? It’s not too late (yet) to get ahead of it. We can still come together to identify standards and best use, and to recommend guard rails and acceptable practices. Does this have to be government? Nope. It can be an independent gathering of industry folks deciding they’re as worried about AI’s rapid unchecked growth as the rest of us are. And government can make sure everyone is invited to the conversation and that it happens in an open forum where citizens know what gets decided.
Government can be a neutral moderator as stakeholders debate and decide. But government has to have as its only incentive the protection of American citizens and their future generations. Right now, it’s hard to determine if government is in this conversation to protect us or if it’s there to ensure tech company donors get what they want.
We can’t afford another globally disruptive technology to simply run its course. Deep and wide and dark as it can get, AI has tremendous potential to continue the work of raising people out of poverty and delivering a better existence to millions of people. Wielded by a select few with nefarious intentions, AI will fail to reach its full potential. We need a broad coalition of caregivers to shepherd this new technology. And everyone, every sector present and future must be represented.
Not just donors.
How do we do it? Coalitions formed voluntarily through the very technology they would organize – the internet. This is not central planning from technocratic government. This is crowd sourced wisdom from users and entrepreneurs and social psychologists and theorists and practitioners. A coalition of the willingly engaged, influential experts whose perspectives are informed and constructive. Not defensive, combative, or territorial, but a kind of Open Source sharing of best practices and ideal ambition.
This was the idea behind the World Economic Forum, and in academic circles, at least, that medium is still well respected. In other circles, WEF is a gathering of elites in which the interests of the regular folks among us may not be taken into consideration. The findings and recommendations of these AI forums should be brought to our representatives for consideration. Not just one forum. But dozens.
Then, our elected officials who know what the heck the internet is, who understand how AI works, who have a sense of what the risks of boundary-less technology are, they make some choices about acceptable practices. The ones that need laws get laws.
Organize. Research. Debate. Decide. Repeat.
And what I can do, as your Senator, is be aware of the steps being taken and the people taking them and to listen, and learn, and make choices based on what’s best for South Carolina. I can do that. Organize, research, debate, decide, repeat. Got it.
What can you do? Learn as much as you can from as many sources as you can: the library, the local colleges and universities, vetted resources with credentials you trust. Attend these forums and lend your voice to the concerns, the expectations, and even the hopes for AI. Don’t know where there is one? Host one.
Finally, elect people who know things: discipline knowledge so we know when AI is wrong, how software functions, and the basic vocabulary for these new technologies; elect people willing to learn what they don’t know. Elect people who will take this seriously and not just take donations to do nothing.
Here are some AI resources I’ve been reading. Maybe they’ll send you down a rabbithole of learning and considering the AI future we can build together:
The GenAI Divide – An MIT study on the future of AI in business
AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity – from Harvard Business Review
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