The Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Developments on Culture and Society: Regulation, Control and Alignment

The manic flurry of activity following the recent introduction of Open AI’s ChatGPT-4, Google’s Bard and other similar advanced Large Language Models (LLMs) has tended to generate rather more heat than light in both popular and academic discourse about the main implications of the new applications. Debate has ranged from doom-laden apocalyptic warnings to hyperbolic accounts of how AI will revolutionise and enhance all aspects of human activity. Attempting to steer a middle way between these extremes, this article concentrates on the key issues of regulation, control and alignment of the new systems since these are the areas that are likely to be of the first importance in informing and influencing the ways in which AI impacts all aspects of our lives. The key themes examined here build on my previous article on the educational implications of AI which was published in Qeios (Hyland, 2023a), and there are some overlaps with this piece and the current discussion so as to provide a background for those who may not have read the original.