.published at this source https://ed3world.substack.com/p/real-threats-of-ai-metaverse-for?ut... by Vriti Saraf founder ed3dao.com andk20educators
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Dear Educators & Friends,
Sam Altman and the AI crew are not backing down from their push to seriously consider regulations on AI technology. Yesterday, they came out with another statement asking for AI policy intervention. This one was short and to the point:
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
For more context, this previous letter gets a bit deeper into AI destroying humanity.
It’s quite interesting that while these AI titans are asking for regulation, they are continuing to train GPT-4 (potentially GPT-5) and building AI products that are onboarding hundreds of millions of users. The incentives seem misaligned here and something feels a bit fishy. Perhaps, as AI expert Geoff Hinton says, “it cannot be stopped” at this point.
So for this issue, I thought it would be useful to summarize & dive into the risks and threats of AI from both a practical level (short term) and existential level (long term). The existential risks are assuming that AI will gain sentience, or the capacity for self-awareness and cognitive ability.
Immediate Risks of AI
Misinformation: Sometimes, AI “hallucinates” and gives you the wrong information; AI can generate content that is believable, like the images above
Algorithmic Bias: Training data can be inherently biased based on developer decisions; Data can also be biased due to flawed data sampling where certain groups are over or underrepresented
Intellectual property theft: AI uses previous human-generated content to create new content but does not credit the original sources in any way
Violation of privacy & data: More of our data is available online than we think and we don’t necessarily have control over what AI consumes and shares; ChatGPT has already had a data breach
Lack of transparency: Open AI is free to use but the cost is our data and we don’t really know what they’re doing with it
Existential Risks of AI
Weaponization: AI can provide complex solutions to anyone in the world who wants to build chemical weapons, cyber attacks, and other weapons of destruction; With sentience, AI may want to control those systems
Manipulation & deception: As AI trains on human values, those values can be used to manipulate and deceive humans to pursue certain goals; With sentience, AI may create it’s own goals that may be anti-human
Loss of self-governance: As we rely more on AI, humans may lose their ability to be independent; With sentience, AI may take advantage of this overdependence
Imbalance of power: Small groups of people may be able to gain incredible amounts of power (even more than today) toward oppressive systems; With sentience, AI may determine who those people are
Loss of control: As companies and governments give more power to AI, AI will have more control of our operational systems; With sentience, AI may decide to manipulate those systems
Although I won’t specify how each of these risks serve as a major problem for education, I think you can draw conclusions about how students will be impacted. I am working on a set of strategies for leaders to contextualize this productively in education. Ping me on LinkedIn if you're interested.
The resources below will help you uncover the details of these risks and why AI developers believe it could cause human extinction.
FYI, I’m actually not trying to scare you. I’m not even trying to paint AI in a bad light. I still believe AI has the potential to reimagine how we live, learn, and earn. But I also believe that the more we understand the risks, the more we can prepare for them. A positive future with AI is possible, we just have to aggressively pursue it.
Warmly yours,
Vriti & k20 Educators
A critical brief of Altman’s latest statement on AI as an ‘extinction risk’
Is OpenAI really transparent?
Godfather of AI explains why AI is better at learning & collaborating than we are (start 9:56)
AI experts talk about misinformation apocalypse, losing control, and sentience
How AI can predict & manipulate human behaviors
What do we do about Biases in AI?
Could AI generated disinformation threaten 2024 elections?
Could AI generated bias & misinformation threaten public health?
Generative AI’s intellectual property problem
Personal data, surveillance, deep-fakes, are only the start of privacy concerns
Generative AI has more of your business data than you think
Chilling paper on weaponization of AI
Error prone AI used to control weapons
What we can learn from Wall-E about overdependence on AI
Why AI developers keep designing technologies that they think may destroy humanity
Can AI take our jobs? Producing an entire podcast episode using AI
An interactive overview of short & long term AI risks
European Union AI Act may ban Open-Source API access
Here are some recommendations to de-risk AI, that are within our locus of control.
Use it. I know this sounds counter-intuitive but the more you learn how these systems work, the more we can disperse power. Imagine if only large companies were using AI to monopolize markets & manipulate consumers.
Lock up your personal data. Avoid using personal information or company data in ChatGPT or other AI tools. Try to keep personal data off vulnerable sites.
Stay informed & engaged with reputable resources. Supplement opinion pieces with research from experts.
United States AI Bill of Rights
Future of Life Institute is working on mitigating risks of AI
Center on long term risk is addressing worst-case scenarios in AI
Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence is researching AI safety
Talk to others about AI. Attend AI events, join communities, and share your concerns with others. Everyone is experiencing this together. Join Ed3DAO to talk with other educators about AI.
Web3 & Education Social Networking Event (Jun 1, Ed3verse)
Weekly Coffee Chat on Web3 in Education (every Saturday, Discord)
Metaverse Book Club (Jun 3, Zoom & Ed3verse)
Web3 & Education writing group (Jun 25, monthly, Zoom)
Leading Your School or District During the AI & Web3 Revolution (Jun 26, ISTE Live Conference)
3 Ways to Use AI, Web3, & Emerging Tech in Your Schools (Jun 27, ISTE Live Conference)
Mint an Ed3 Educators NFT for life-time access to web3 events, content, conferences, & other perks… and to support the work of this newsletter.
This week’s Metaverse for Education newsletter is about AI threats. More to come on other web3 & emerging tech topics. We’re excited to bring education into the Metaverse & help you leverage the opportunities in the new world.
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My dream: everyone experiences Harrison Owen OpenSpace After%20the%20Rage.pdf
IF SCHOOLS were child centric they would make age relevant interventions:
if anyone is illiterate at age 6 it only takes 90 days to change that - best of all a literate kid can be main helper in 20 minute session - see sunita gandhi
finacial literacy would be practicsed from age 8 - see aflatoun ( works in 100 countries
from age 10 pre-teens would have access to pfysical and mental health studies designed peer to peer -see Lancet
no kid would leave primary school without knowing how open space meetings/teamwork is facilitated
teachers would be celebrated for clarifying which skills involve experiential learning not classroom examination - while there is some recognition that music and sports involve practice, its shocking that coding isnt valued this way ..
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Do you have life-changing moment to share? - what was it and what did you think or do differently after it?
example until 9/11, i assumed that (good) futures are happening somewhere in the world and would be searched out so that all could communally replicate them; === 9/11 caused me to question whether global connectivity will give us time to find sustainable solutions for our kids- i became particulaly interested in places where good education leaps appeared but did not get app'd the world over - one example actually goes back to my favorite 1990s advances in schools that a small cliuster of new zealand schools pioneered - download it here https://oiipdf.com/download/the-learning-revolution
i welcome discussion of this book's parts at any time rsvp chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk if you have a solution every community that develops youth could be cooperational
in 1984our book with economist editors 2025report made the case for 40 year commitment to every child identifying own skils dashboard and maximising AI curation of this- we valued this as sustainability critical worldwide cooperation - we see no logic for changing this concern
== we live in an age where most up to half of knowhow of techforgood changes every 3 years - we needed mindsets for exploration not for being standard examined; a nation that makes its college students its largest debt class is likely to collapse economically socially environmentally if web3 is designed for celebrating sustainability cooperation; and if web3 is not designed for neough yout to linkin the first sustainability generation then we are all heading the way of the dodo
I am learn to learn
TECH - What is IT? and which exponential multipliers most impact human and natural futures?
AI >. silicon chip singularity (ie when one chip > one brain in pure analytical capacity) - science fictiion no moore
who programs the ai - the race to include lost voices eg girls- the world of statistics re=-examined like never before (eg previously mass statistics very weak at coding meaining from numbers)
Biotech >> Affective science (loveq and emotional intelligence remains human's unique edge over artificials for at least 10 more years!)
Some people say that Virtual or Augmented Reality has advanced at its best so far in last 12 months that there are hardly any qualified teachers only pioneering explorers- does this matter - well its VR which is your gateway to web3 - intead of just a mobile device you will like wear a visual sensor system; equally others argue that you shouldnt worry about how fast you put googles on - what you should want is to take back ownbership of what you spend time creating virually- look at the small print of the big platforms you probably dont own anything without them..maybe this is a generation issue bu interstingly the met-generation can now work on chnaging anything that old systems are destroying (eg climate) ...t
IOT which things will now have brains and be as mobile connected as you are
Crypto - can communities celebrate financiang their own most urgent sustainability cooperations? if they dont who wil?
Cyber >> Drone - opportunities and threats of public spaces- first in spaces like the arctic circle if we dont use drones we will get no warning before the big meltdown
-the mkist memorable western campus event i attended in 2010s was tufts colllaboratory summit convened mainly by arctic circle youth under 25;
one of the main debates how to help teachers in arctic circle schools empower their students to use virtual reality to visit other arctic circles schools communities; many of the changes and solutions are analogous; I am reminded by educators leading the compilation of virtual realty libraries of the DICE acronym - a reen might want to do something dangerous like climb everest, why not VR simulate that? there are impossible things a trainee doctor will never be able to travel inside a humans gut but that can be VR'd; there are catastropghic simulations - you would rid the world of bees just to test if donald is wrong about nature being more powerful than he is, you can simulate it; or the future of smart tourism may be curation of what a community is proudest of being visited for - this way ecotourism, cultural appreciation exchanges can be twinned to maximise celebration of each other- and by the way friends of the tourist can join in virtually- of corse this raises a metaverse question - that Hong Kong is leading the world on
being 100% public - good and bad hacs- note context matters - context 1 smart city context 2 isolated vilalge no moore context 3 make a huge land safe at borders
3D printing aka additive engineering
Big Data Small by market tech sector Leapfrogging
Nano cf einstein - to innovate science model more micro
Blockchain
Downloads from MIT Innovations journal
Volume 2
downloads library 1: MIT innovations journal special issue youth economics opportunities
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