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Arguably, this has nothing to do with AI, but an imbalance of power. From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense to do whatever is just good enough to turn a profit with minimal effort. As long as there is healthy competition, there is enough incentive to do better, and a customer can switch services without experiencing significant hardship. However, with a lot of the big tech companies, that is no longer the case, and once you run into a problem there is neither free-market nor regulatory mechanisms that can help any individual solve their problem. Currently, the big tech companies can eschew responsibility by claiming the rights of private business -- having very strong autonomy over how and with whom they do business -- and despite them being de-facto public utilities at this point, the claims are made that regulation is not necessary / not allowed / not productive / harmful. Why this is accepted is puzzling to me, as it is very commonly known macro-economic theory that the usually claimed self-regulating free-market mechanisms no longer work for when large imbalances, eg. monopolies, exist. We have the government explicitly for this reason, to create a counter-balance against forces so large that any individual cannot deal with on their own. And while it is true that we can expect regulatory intervention to be difficult, especially as the political process cannot possibly keep pace with technology, it is indeed very strongly preferable to giving free reign to private entities with explicitly anti-consumer interests (eg. a corporation has to make their shareholders money, not protect their customers or the environment). So what's the solution? Maybe regulatory agencies need to be given more teeth, including funding and updated charters. Yesterday's Cartel is today's Big Tech. |
An imbalance of power because of employing AI with suboptimal results, but not caring about the negative externalities because, well, they're external.