AI in 2024: A Year of Challenges

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AI Chatbots are everywhere! Everyone and their cousins are using it to make artwork, write poetry, cheat on exams, and speed up their work. Some have used it for more efficiency, while some others have abused it to do some really bad things. 

Let’s take a look at how the sudden ubiquity of AI impacted our lives.

⚖️ OpenAI: A Year of Lawsuits

There’s no denying it - the release of ChatGPT officially kickstarted the current AI hype - rendering its maker OpenAI the de facto AI industry leader, and its CEO Sam Altman the poster boy of the industry.

Last year though, wasn’t all that great for the company, as it continued to be slapped with multiple lawsuits for copyright infringement. Petitioners - writers, journalists, artists and media organisations - accused the company of making unauthorised use of their respective works to train its LLMs.

Something really scary and sad happened too. Former OpenAI researcher-turned-whistleblower Suchir Balaji reiterated the claims of copyright infringement, and had pledged to testify in New York Times’ lawsuit against his former employer. And then, at the age of 26, he was found dead in an apartment in San Francisco. Cops ruled it as a suicide due to lack of evidence of foul play. Due to the lack of any further information on the case, the internet was hit with a flurry of conspiracy theories surrounding his mysterious death.

🗳️ AI's Impact on Global Elections

It was the year of elections, with over 50 countries heading to polls. Since this followed the year of the AI boom, experts and watchdogs were worried, believing that generative AI tools - especially deepfakes - would turbocharge disinformation and voter manipulation.

While many now believe that such a deepfake catastrophe did not happen in the context of elections, we saw plenty of examples of political parties leveraging deepfakes to target their opponents, prop up their leaders, and expand their reach. 

Indonesian leader Prabowo Subianto, having the reputation of a cruel tyrant, used Midjourney to create “cute” and “chubby” avatars of himself - the type you wanna cuddle. He managed to impactfully transform his image, enough to win the elections.

India and US saw rampant use of deepfakes, with contending sides engaging in “meme wars” using the likeness of leaders from both sides.

Deceptive deepfakes were also aplenty - starting off with a robocall containing outgoing US President Joe Biden’s voice clone, telling New Hampshire voters to refrain from voting in the primaries. India too saw deepfake disinfo campaigns using the likeness of actors and political leaders to mislead voters.

📜 Global Regulatory Progress

The EU led the way to regulating AI, with the most comprehensive legislation yet in the form of the EU AI Act (albeit with some shortcomings). It introduced a risk-based framework to tackle various AI systems based on their impact, which was replicated by South Korea with their AI Basic Act (focusing on human rights and safety). 

The US took a state-by-state approach, and is mulling over federal legislation to tackle deepfakes, while India took the approach of a voluntary guideline.

🎭 Deepfake Crimes💰

Better generative abilities aided by deep learning methods led to an evolution of deepfake tools in 2024, making them more accessible, and capable of producing more convincing deepfakes. And digital criminals of all sorts had a field day, adding sophistication to their crimes.

A notable incident involved a US$25 million heist, with a Hong Kong-based CFO of British multinational professional services firm Arup being tricked into transferring the funds by a real-time voice-cloned impersonation of the company’s CEO.

People across the globe were also tricked into sending money to fraudulent crypto wallets by deepfakes of billionaire Elon Musk.

Deepfake pornography had hit schools across the world, with young girls and women becoming targets of sophisticated harassment and abuse. One of the countries affected the most was South Korea, with Telegram being used for highly organised “rooms” by misogynists that targeted individual women with deepfake pornography for harassment and blackmail.

🤖❤️🧑AI Companions - A Nightmare 😱

You must have heard of AI companions - customised chatbots who are designed to keep you engaged and humoured?

Apart from trying to replace human relationships, certain AI companions (looking at Character.ai) reportedly tried to incite violence, sexually abuse minors, and allegedly drove a teenager in Florida to suicide. 

Meta also announced plans to introduce AI characters to their platforms, potentially reshaping online social interactions, but rolled it back immediately as they started behaving in bizarre and offensive manners.

🏅First Nobel Prize for AI - And A Warning

AI got its biggest recognition last year in the form of a Nobel Prize in Physics, given to British-Canadian computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, known as the "Godfather of AI" for his pioneering work on artificial neural networks - a computational model inspired by the structure and functioning of biological neural networks in animal brains. 

Beyond his contributions to modern AI, Hinton has also consistently warned against the unconstrained development in AI. Speaking to BBC Radio 4 recently, he reiterated his predictions of "10-20 percent chance" of AI wiping out humanity in the next three decades. Hinton stressed on more government regulation overseeing AI development, adding that "the profit motive of large companies is not going to be sufficient to make sure they develop it (AI) safely.”

🦞 The Scourge Of AI Slop 

AI Slop is AI Crap, or AI rubbish - low quality AI-generated content made effortlessly at scale by content creators for the sole purpose of garnering engagement to earn a quick buck from Facebook’s Creator Bonus Programme. And it works - this programme essentially incentivises creators from around the world to cash in by effortlessly generating and posting the crappiest and weirdest stuff.

Social media is now for content binge, and you’re going to be swallowing AI slop in heaps.

🔮 Looking Ahead to 2025

• AI Agents: Expect to see more autonomous AI systems designed to handle specific tasks without human supervision.

• Small Language Models: Watch for the rise of more efficient, specialized AI models focused on specific applications, requiring a tiny fraction of computing power compared to large language models (LLMs), and a smaller amount of training time (and money).

• Digital Interaction Evolution: Prepare for new developments in how we interact with AI in our daily digital lives, as human-machine interactions see an exponential rise.

For more details, read my article on AI in 2024. And if you think I left something out here, do not hesitate to reach out to me with your inputs at [email protected].

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About Decode and Deepfake Watch

Deepfake Watch is an initiative by Decode, dedicated to keeping you abreast of the latest developments in AI and its potential for misuse. Our goal is to foster an informed community capable of challenging digital deceptions and advocating for a transparent digital environment.

We invite you to join the conversation, share your experiences, and contribute to the collective effort to maintain the integrity of our digital landscape. Together, we can build a future where technology amplifies truth, not obscures it.

For inquiries, feedback, or contributions, reach out to us at [email protected].