Experts doubt warnings from AI companies and see PR motives behind them

The fact that the big AI companies are suddenly warning about the consequences of artificial intelligence does not entirely convince skeptics. Two experts suspect completely different motives behind the alarmism of OpenAI or Anthropic.

The social ethicist Elmar Nass believes that slowing down the development of artificial intelligence (AI) makes little sense. Nass told the “Rheinische Post”: “The suggestion of slowing down AI development is not effective in practice. And it is not new at all.” Nass emphasized: "The market is obviously supposed to be abandoned with its logic. And the avant-garde of the technology moguls is becoming a moral authority." In addition, this would “also block human-serving innovation,” he criticized.

The question arises as to who should set the speed and how the process should be measured and controlled, Nass told the newspaper. "Of course there will then be players and countries that simply don't comply, such as China, and hope to gain competitive advantages as a result. This is just a popular tinkering with symptoms without getting to the root of the real problem," he said.

Instead of a slowdown, Nass called for ethical guidelines for AI research and international rules. "It is crucial that such research must be supported ethically. This should begin immediately. And there should also be international rules and bans, as with corresponding weapons. These are measures that can take effect immediately," said Nass.

"Not a coincidence, but a targeted PR campaign"

Digital expert Thomas Köhler viewed the recent warnings from AI companies about the consequences of the technology as partly a PR campaign. Köhler told the “Rheinische Post”: “For me there is a lot to suggest that this time the initiative is not a coincidence, but a targeted PR campaign.”

From his point of view, there were several motives behind the initiative. "On the one hand, the economic viability of many AI business models remains highly fragile: the effort for data centers, chips, electricity and cooling is enormous, while it is not yet clear when this will actually be viable." AI, the short form for artificial intelligence, is currently "a significant billion-dollar subsidy business - and there is still no prospect of making money with it. This is also how I explain OpenAI's postponed IPO," said Köhler.

In addition, the pressure is growing due to increasingly powerful open source language models. "This is exactly what threatens the business basis of the large commercial providers. That's why I read this new warning rhetoric as an attempt to put open source under greater regulatory pressure and thus secure its own market position," he said. Köhler emphasized: "This shows that this debate is not just about security, but also about market interests and global power issues." Nevertheless, the security expert emphasized: "I am definitely alarmed about the security issue." But that applies more in the long term, says Köhler. “In the short term, the effects are often overestimated, but in the long term they tend to be underestimated,” he said about the progress of AI.