AI has entranced content-driven businesses, curious customers, and venture capitalists alike. The scale can’t be overstated: A recent Deloitte study found that four out of five companies have deployed at least 3 AI platforms in their business, which means darn near everyone. And so many outlets are pointing to the new AI gold rush led by NVIDIA, of all companies, creating hardware to start matching the powerful software platforms.
Image designed in Midjourney AI
But many companies eagerly picking up the proverbial pickaxe now may get regulated out of the business before they even get involved. Furthermore, today’s market leaders, from Chat GPT creator Open AI to Watson builder IBM, could wield less power in the future.
Who are these folks demanding government oversight? Open AI and IBM.
“My worst fears are that we in this field, in this technology, in this industry, cause significant harm to the world,” Open AI CEO Sam Altman told U.S. Congress at a May 16th hearing. “I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong, and we want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.”
Exactly five years ago, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was apologizing to the same Congress for the damage social media had done with spreading misinformation, selling people’s privacy data, and creating general mayhem. And just a few years before, he was saying the secret to then-Facebook’s success was “moving fast and breaking things”. The specter of Zuckerberg hung over Altman’s testimony as if it was the ghost of Christmas future.
“Sensible safeguards are not in opposition to innovation,” said Senator Richard Bloomenthal, directly referencing U.S. law Section 230 and similar worldwide that protect social media platforms from being liable for any damage done by what their consumers post.
In short, social media has become the poster child for what happens when governments take the laissez faire approach to new technology.
Altman, other witnesses, as well as Congress itself, seemed set on a three-pronged approach:
- Government licenses required for companies to practice AI and revoked if set guidelines are violated
- Those guidelines determined by an international government entity, like CERN does for space exploration or WHO for international health
- And AI-driven companies increasing safety measures so more issues are determined before products are launched to the public, not after
This will affect your business in two important ways.
First, your AI options today will shrink because of regulation and competition. AI costs billions to run – ChatGPT alone reportedly has a burn rate of $700,000 U.S. per day. As experts say, we can expect more consolidation in the AI models available simply because only a few corporations have the resources to maintain it. Add in the likely license required to start a legal AI platform and you have a much higher barrier to entry for new software. The recent crazy boom in AI-driven software may slow down, which means those dizzying options for your business may suddenly shrink.
Second, your liability exposure may be higher for customers. As Altman says, “I worry that, as the models get better and better, the users can have less and less of their own discriminating thought process behind it.” For example, if you lean strictly on AI to create your content without proper guidance and governance (a discriminating thought process) and your customers are hurt fiscally, physically, or emotionally, then, depending on the laws developed, your business may be considered as liable as the software your company leaned on.
You don’t want to wait until the laws are developed, as international governments as well as the developers themselves are scrambling to get something in place. Consider how very few people knew what ChatGPT was in 2021. This is not the normal growth curve.
AI is too powerful to leave out of your business. The game plan is to find the best strategy to onboard it into your business while making sure the right guidance is in place to protect you and your customers. Partners like Immedia balance proprietary AI/ML technology with editorial wisdom to make sure things land where they are intended – no matter what new development comes down the pike.
The AI platforms are telling you not to lean just on their insights. Don’t go it alone.
Luckily, with the Contrend platform and Immedia Content, our proprietary analytic system will identify gaps in your specific content landscape, be it topic, style or format. genre, tone, style or length. We then enable and empower you to create a targeted and bespoke content strategy to open new marketing frontiers for you. We’re ready to talk anytime! Drop us an email at info@contrend.com.
