If left unchecked, advances in artificial intelligence could have civilisation-altering impacts and rapidly increase the amount of dangerous misinformation being spread online, a former Facebook employee has warned.
Whistleblower Frances Haugen said as AI became bigger and economies relied more on software running on data centres the world would start to see an “era of opacity” creep in.
The former engineer and product manager — who quit Facebook in 2021 after leaking thousands of documents showing toxic content was being spread knowingly by the platform — said without stronger regulation there would be “a repeat of what we saw with social media” on a far greater scale.
“When we start getting into scalable systems that run on data centres, a very small number of people can have civilisation-impacting levels of power,” Ms Haugen told the National Press Club on Tuesday.
“At Facebook, there’s a very small number of people who really understand how these algorithms work and yet it impacts what everyone sees in the news.
“When we see what kind of scale that can impact, that can have really serious consequences.”
Millions of people worldwide use artificial intelligence programs daily.
ChatGPT has more than 100 million users worldwide. It generated 1.6 billion visits in June.
Recent surveys suggest nearly one in four Australians use AI programs in their workplaces and up to 70 per cent of kids aged between 14 to 17 have used an AI software at least once.
Ms Haugen — who built a...
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