“X boss Elon Musk warns Apple ban at Tesla, SpaceX over OpenAI relationship”

Elon Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI, the company that brought us ChatGPT. He recently went public with his concerns about AI being built into the Apple iOS update. It seems as though everything now has some sort of AI “assistant” built into it. My Facebook feed now allows me to edit and search things with AI integrated into the platform. The Mailchimp service that I’m writing this email on has an option to “Edit with AI,” which I never use. I like to choose my own words to bring to you because I think that’s important. Call me old-fashioned. I do, however, use AI to “edit for grammar” my emails before I send them out to you. Of course, I want you to believe I did very well in my English classes in school. Diagramming sentences was always such an annoyance for me.

But why is Elon so concerned with OpenAI partnering with Apple to build AI into iOS? Elon has publicly criticized the quickness with which the world is embracing AI without thinking about the possible consequences of AI becoming uncontrollable. I think his concerns that Apple’s public statements do not align with its practices related to AI are not to be taken lightly.

We should embrace technologies and the new tasks they can help us achieve. Why fight the waves? We won’t win. However, we should learn to surf. I do believe that we should not put our trust in these companies without questioning their protocols, motives, and applications of technologies. I like to approach life with the “trust but verify” motto, but I keep that limited to my interactions with humans in my life. When it comes to technology, I would prefer to “verify before trust,” but at the level of sophistication of the technology and with the motives of profit over safety that companies sometimes employ, it becomes more and more difficult to know which products or companies we should use or support. I’m going to go with Elon on this one and watch this unfold with suspicious eyes.

~ Ryan