Generative AI: Here to stay, but for good?

Abstract

Generative AI has taken the world by storm, kicked off for real by ChatGPT and quickly followed by further development and the release of GPT-4 and similar models from OpenAI’s competitors. The street has most certainly found its use for generative artificial intelligence (AI), and there is no longer much point in discussing whether generative AI will be influential. It will, and what remains to be discussed it how influential it will be, and what potential harms arise when we use AI to generate text and other forms of content. Technological change entails societal change, and we must always endeavor to ask how new technologies shapes, engenders, or potentially erodes, the “good society”. In this sense, Generative AI is another instance of politically and culturally disruptive autonomous technology, and in this short commentary I highlight some of the key questions to be asked regarding consequences on the micro, meso, and macro level.

Keywords: generative AI, large language models, generative adversarial networks, harms, power, inequality