NOTE: the following article is satire, not a statement of fact. Treat it as such.
Notoriously terrible public speaker VP Kamala Harris just had to give another speech, this on on AI, and, during the speech, showed how great AI would be if it could get her to say something other than a meaningless word salad of buzzwords when speaking. Beginning her rambling speech on AI, she said:
So, tomorrow, I will participate in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Global Summit on AI Safety to continue to advance global collaboration on the safe and responsible use of AI. Today, I will speak more broadly about the vision and the principles that guide America’s work on AI. President Biden and I believe that all leaders from government, civil society, and the private sector have a moral, ethical, and societal duty to make sure that AI is adopted and advanced in a way that protects the public from potential harm and that ensures that everyone is able to enjoy its benefits.
AI has the potential to do profound good to develop powerful new medicines to treat and even cure the diseases that have for generations plagued humanity, to dramatically improve agricultural production to help address global food insecurity, and to save countless lives in the fight against the climate crisis. But just as AI has the potential to do profound good, it also has the potential to cause profound harm. From AI-enabled cyberattacks at a scale beyond anything we have seen before to AI-formulated bio-weapons that could endanger the lives of millions, these threats are often referred to as the “existential threats of AI” because, of course, they could endanger the very existence of humanity. (Pause)
These threats, without question, are profound, and they demand global action. But let us be clear. There are additional threats that also demand our action — threats that are currently causing harm and which, to many people, also feel existential. Consider, for example: When a senior is kicked off his healthcare plan because of a faulty AI algorithm, is that not existential for him? When a woman is threatened by an abusive partner with explicit, deep-fake photographs, is that not existential for her?
She continued, “Well, that is a threat. Because being threatened by an abusive partner is not good. Being threatened is not good, because threats are bad. But AI can be good. Just think of all the things intelligence that is artificial, which is what AI is, could do. It could, I think, do lots of things. Many things, in fact, are what AI could do.”
“Just think about the situation. It could be good because AI could do things that non-artificial intelligence could do. AI could edit my speeches because AI is AI and AI is smart because intelligence and smart are synonymous. So that is very exciting, and AI is almost as smart as space is big. And space is very big. Just like AI is very smart, with the computer training.”