Security News > 2024 > March > Public AI as an Alternative to Corporate AI

When tech billionaires and corporations steer AI, we get AI that tends to reflect the interests of tech billionaires and corporations, instead of the public.

To benefit society as a whole we need an AI public option-not to replace corporate AI but to serve as a counterbalance-as well as stronger democratic institutions to govern all of AI. Like public roads and the federal postal system, a public AI option could guarantee universal access to this transformative technology and set an implicit standard that private services must surpass to compete.

They would provide a mechanism for public input and oversight on the critical ethical questions facing AI development, such as whether and how to incorporate copyrighted works in model training, how to distribute access to private users when demand could outstrip cloud computing capacity, and how to license access for sensitive applications ranging from policing to medical use.

Administered by a transparent and accountable agency, a public AI would offer greater guarantees about the availability, equitability, and sustainability of AI technology for all of society than would exclusively private AI development.

Federally funded foundation AI models would be provided as a public service, similar to a health care public option.

The key piece of the ecosystem the government would dictate when creating an AI public option would be the design decisions involved in training and deploying AI foundation models.

News URL

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/03/public-ai-as-an-alternative-to-corporate-ai.html