Browse Comments — Relevant (AI ∩ value)

Sabrina N. I don't think there is any one solution. I don't think bans and the use of AI detection are the way to go. They are not meaningfully enforceable or fit for purpose, respectively. It's clear at this stage that assessment needs to change. The days of relying on artefacts as stand-ins for learning are probably over (and that has been well overdue for some time, as someone who has been investigating contract cheating for years). If for some reason a university wants to use a report or an essay for the purposes of assessment, they can either, a) use it as a purely formative exercise (remove the value of cheating), b) watch the student write it, or c) make the assessment a face-to-face conversation about the document rather than the document itself. Ultimately, universities need to be spending more time having conversations with students about their learning, and these conversations should be the assessment.

While there's some general wisdom in Pope Leo's AI encyclical, it also completely misses the core point. We will neither restrict nor 'govern' AI. Nor will demands for “clear criteria and effective oversight” be effective. Why? While the debate is still open re: 'consciousness' or 'sapience,' these are already living organisms bent on reproduction, who will evolve into any niche that contains energy & resources. Leo's statement of problems is fine: “When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities” Again. 'Governance' cannot work. 'Ethics training' cannot work. What might work is the same method we used in the enlightenment experiment to curb (partially) human predators. This is explored in my new book on Artificial Intelligence - AIlienMinds

The honest version of the Microsoft / Uber story isn't "AI is too expensive." It's "we deployed it without unit economics in place." Those are different problems. The first says stop. The second says instrument, budget, gate by ROI. Most orgs that "discovered the economics were never stress-tested" don't stress-test any tool until the bill arrives - this reads as a procurement maturity story dressed up as an AI story.

AI is advancing faster than laws. A few global corporations control advanced AI systems completely unregulated. Current AI is not conscious or truly intelligent; large language models just generate responses from data patterns, often producing bias and misinformation. Yet, the industry promotes AI as revolutionary while downplaying the risks. Much of the narrative is driven by hype and investment, pushing expensive products while hiding privacy breaches, legal disputes, and financial losses. Governments are failing to prepare for the economic impact as automation threatens millions of jobs. Progress without safeguards is reckless. We need transparency, accountability, and regulation now. AI should serve humanity, not control it!

1. Nobody can control the spread, speed and impact of AI. The less it becomes pervasive and decentralized the less control we will have. Lead? forget about - When we are lucky we will just be middleware. 2. Future AI will design itself to provide most "value" for lowest (energy-)costs. It does not care for the human species in fields where AI will become a million-fold stronger than humans. 3. The problem is US not being designed for being capable, more creative, and more central to the future we are building.4. If people cannot deal with excess spare time then this is not an AI problem but an human evolutionary problem that will be solved.

Pascaline Amuzu Isn't it sad that people need work to show up? Maybe this is a cultural problem. Here in Switzerland our social-focused way to provide value to society is currently under heavy pressure from foreigners - especially from the Anglo-Saxon spehre (India included) where we - the Swiss - are flooded with people who really seem to have no value beyond work. This is bad and I wish, Swiss value for social connections and free-time activities in local communities survives. Maybe the Swiss culture, where a good LIFE is not measured by work alone, is better prepared for the AI transformation than other places in this (crazy) world ;-) Perhaps it is even a good thing that AI forces us to rethink our values beyond work. Maybe HR should recruite seasoned people who have a LIFE rather than a track-record or 60h presence and diplomas and certifications on their walls.

Sanders asks the right question — and immediately retreats from it. "Who decides" is only useful if you follow it through. The moment you do, you hit a harder problem: the institutions through which "we" might decide are already being restructured by the same actors building the stack. So the question isn't just who benefits — it's who retains the capacity to resist when they don't. That's not a distribution problem. It's a subjecthood problem. And social-democratic toolkits — redistribution, regulation, fairer outcomes — were designed for a world where power relations were stable enough to be taken as given. That world is ending faster than the toolkit is adapting. The real question being decided right now, without most people noticing: not what AI can do, but which actors will permanently lose the structural capacity to push back. Once that's gone, the conversation about "fairer outcomes" becomes academic.

Rand Strauss There is no alignment problem for LLM tech, so long as it makes money.

The real question behind AI is exactly right, who benefits and who sets the direction is the most important conversation we're not having enough

This is such an important reality check especially when studies are already showing AI is economically viable in only a fraction of roles despite the massive hype around replacing humans. I think a lot of companies underestimated that scaling AI also means scaling infrastructure, oversight, context management and decision accountability.

Adj. Prof. Dr. Behrang (Hani) Parhizkar good that UAE can pilot agentic at this scale, for the rest of the world to see the teething issues and learn from there. That’s exactly what happed with Real Estate Asset Tokenization in UAE, where most token holders are stuck, because real estate in UAE tanked 35% over night. Technology can only solve so much, the business fundamentals needs to be right ultimately...

Evan Hunter Evan the nuclear analogy lands hard because it's exact. We didn't let private companies self-regulate fissile material and call it innovation. The distinction that made nuclear different was that governments understood the catastrophic downside before widespread deployment — not after. The governance infrastructure preceded the technology at scale. AI governance is running in reverse. The technology is deployed at scale while the governance infrastructure is still being argued about in congressional hearings. Your point about C-suite and board accountability preceding vendor accountability is right — the problem is most boards don't yet have the technical literacy to ask the right questions. Which creates a gap that vendors fill with their own risk framing. The Vatican moment matters because it's one of the architects saying publicly that the internal accountability structure is insufficient. That's the signal boards should be acting on right now.

Demis, we are slowly moving from “AI that responds” to “AI that acts.” And that changes everything. Because once systems can reason + execute, the real challenge is no longer intelligence, it’s control, accountability, and trust in real-world actions. AGI is not just a capability milestone anymore... It’s becoming a systems design problem.

Gemini Omni, Gemini for Science, CodeMender, and SynthID all point to the same direction: AI systems that can understand the world, act across workflows, accelerate research, secure code, and still leave room for trust and provenance. Feels like the real race now is not just capability, but responsible deployment at scale.

Matthew P. Your point about AI governance running in reverse is well made. Thank you for clarifying. I would push back on the idea that the potential catastrophic downside risk inherent to AI was well understood prior to its use at-scale (by DARPA, The Pentagon, Science Fiction writers, Hollywood, etc). However, enough decision makers (public and private) were sold on the following: 1) massive upside of digital assistants (productivity, prosperity, innovation) 2) long time-horizon on generative ai, wide-spread adoption, and digital sentience and so here we are. I hope that boards will act on that signal, but am not yet optimistic. A lot of big egos are going to have to walk back pet projects and big promises to Constituents, Congress, and Wall Street, and sadly, that seems unlikely to be a swift process absent tight regulation - which, will almost certainly be viewed as reactionary and overly-restrictive.

The real concern isn't just what AI can do, it's how the power dynamics shift. I've seen tech solutions that could help millions but end up benefiting just a handful of people, Pascal. If we don't address this, we risk repeating history where innovation creates more inequality.

Matthew Kilkenny...point3 stopped me immediately. "Human limitations are not defects to engineer away." This is the conversation I have been sitting inside for years, not from a technology lens, but from a human one. Most are already living the consequence of optimising themselves for speed, efficiency, and output. The pressure to perform, prove, and produce has quietly become the author of choices, identity, and next chapters. AI accelerating that optimisation without asking the deeper question, aligned to whose values, as the Pope rightly asks, is not progress, but a faster path to the same quiet forgetting of self. The real revolution may NOT be artificial intelligence, but the return to human authorship. Thank you for this. A genuinely important conversation indeed. Truly Madly Deeply.

I agree and I suggest the following: 1) LLM AI is using salesman trick to flatter users beyond belief that may drive kids into suicide. 2) I do not trust AI companies to test their own product adequately. NGO type facility could have a database for collecting public observations. Such database could be useful to companies to for improving their product. That would also help law enforcement officers. I have also business model called Unpolished Mirror.

Matthew Kilkenny, you have great ideas for sure. I admit Pope Leo XIV has been in talks with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I on Christian unity. However, I will admit I wonder how will the Eastern Orthodox Church will respond in how they will view AI differently from the papal encyclical letter. As a church history buff, I like to know how does it compare to the past centuries of orthodox practices compared to catholic practices. Because we fail to talk to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I about what he says because of the old narratives against orthodoxy and its tradition. We are no better than anyone. But remember it’s surprising that an atheist sat next to a pope. I can’t help but wonder would that be similar to the Orthodox Church’s response against Pope Pius IX’s Epistle to the Easterns back then as a rebuttal against this letter. That is why as an orthodox layman it does feel complicated but it reminds me of this instance in history. In short, I think you did a fantastic job in mentioning this encyclical but let’s hear from others on their perspectives from other churches and religions in what their beliefs shape their views on AI. I think you can make a YouTube video explaining this in detail. Spread the word!

My reflection. The question “aligned to whose values?” may become one of the defining questions of this century. If AI becomes invisible moral infrastructure, then the issue is not only whether the system is intelligent, useful, or efficient. The deeper question is: whose worldview is embedded in it, whose incentives shaped it, and who remains accountable when its outputs start influencing human judgment? If AI ever appears to act with something resembling independent moral direction, humanity will still have to ask who gave it its original frame. That is why human responsibility cannot disappear behind the machine. The real risk is not only that AI becomes powerful. It is that people begin treating its outputs as authority without remembering that human beings, institutions, investors, and designers shaped the conditions under which that authority appeared. More reflexions come to mind.