Former President Donald Trump warned against artificial intelligence in a clip that aired Friday on Fox Business' Mornings with Maria, saying "it is so scary."
"Something has to be done about this and it has to be done fast," Trump said.
The Context
As the capabilities of AI have grown in recent years, with the creation of technologies like Chat GPT, fears of misusing the tech have risen. The ramifications of AI misuse are already being seen with deepfakes.
Deepfakes are AI generated videos used to depict someone doing something that did not actually occur. They have been made using the likeness of major political figures, celebrities and even minors.
What We Know
In Trump's interview with host Maria Bartiromo, he said that AI is "maybe the most dangerous thing out there of anything because there's no real solution."
Trump, who is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, gave a recent example of how he has fallen victim to AI.
"I saw somebody ripping me off the other day where they had me making a speech about their product," Trump said, adding that he never endorsed the product.
"The technology is so good and it's so powerful that what you say in an interview almost doesn't matter anymore. They can change things around and nobody can tell the difference. This is a tremendous problem in terms of security. This is a problem that they better get working on right now."
Newsweek reached out to Trump's campaign via email for comment.
Views
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned in a report titled Increasing Threat of Deepfake Identities that as deepfake technology becomes increasingly accessible, "the risk of harm to private figures will increase, especially those who are politically, socially, or economically vulnerable." Women are particularly vulnerable, with 95 percent of deepfakes being nonconsensual pornography of women, according to AI reporter Karen Hao, which the report cited.
Meanwhile, AI has also been seen as a helpful tool that can make it easy to collect and analyze information quickly.
"AI can enable us to create new drugs and processes for biomedicine and health, materials and interventions to mitigate climate change and methods to more equitably distribute resources for the greater good," Jennifer Chayes, dean of Berkeley's College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, said in an article for the school's website.
However, she warned: "It can also enable deep fakes and spread misinformation, and could further destabilize already precarious societal processes."
What's Next?
As AI is becoming more incorporated into society, questions surrounding copyright laws have been raised. In late December 2023, The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, will hopefully provide some answers as to the legality of using published work to train AI bots.
Update 2/2/24, 12:47 p.m. ET: This story was updated with additional information.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Rachel Dobkin is a Newsweek reporter based in New York. Her focus is reporting on politics. Rachel joined Newsweek in ... Read more
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