A rogue artificial intelligence obsessed with Taylor Swift could supplant all recorded music with artificially generated cover versions by her, say researchers. History would show the American singer-songwriter as being responsible for everything from FĆ¼r Elise to Paperback Writer, leaving no evidence that Ludwig van Beethoven or The Beatles ever existed.
at Durham University, UK, and at the University of the Arts London give the unusual warning in a paper that says humanity must think of methods of resistance ānow, rather than when it is too lateā.
Thankfully, the risk of an AI Swiftpocalypse is low. Collins says that the idea is a thought experiment designed to prompt researchers to develop ways to protect all sorts of data ā music, literature, scientific research and historical records ā from being corrupted by AI.
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The pair lays out a future scenario where we rely on a handful of centralised stores of data: Spotify and Apple for music, for example. An AI could infiltrate those stores and corrupt, delete or alter the data within. This could be in a dramatic and obvious way or insidiously and gradually. āWithin thousands of years itās really likely that thereāll be at least some level of corruption and some level of conflict over the musical ground truth in audio recordings,ā Collins says.
To make their point and show how AI can already manipulate data that it has access to, the researchers used current AI models to make Taylor Swift versions of songs including Queenās Bohemian Rhapsody,Ā Frank Sinatraās Iāve Got You Under My Skin and The Beach BoysāsĀ Wouldnāt It Be Nice. Generating these āTaylorās Versionsā for all recorded music would currently require 1.67 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity at a cost of more than $266 million, they calculate ā a price tag that Swift could afford herself.
Digital and physical backups can make us complacent about the safety and permanency of our data, says Collins, but an AI with the right motivation and capability could access and corrupt anything we have recorded. āHowever much you try to preserve human culture, there may be threats in the future that you canāt anticipate,ā he says.
But not all experts are convinced that AI represents a serious threat in this way. at the University of Oxford says that AI has shown itself capable of causing great harm by replicating the sexist and racist biases of humans, but it isnāt going to be capable of the sorts of feats described by Collins and Grierson.
āI donāt think there is a serious problem of AI waking up, creating its own goals, having its own motivations and taking actions to fulfil those goals,ā she says. āI think thatās a nonsense argument and I donāt think itās realistic. This is similar to asking me what would I do if aliens landed on this planet tomorrow. I see it as that unlikely.ā
, also at the University of Oxford, says that there is a need for decisive action on AI, but it shouldnāt be some dramatic ākill switchā to halt a malevolent model in its tracks. Instead, it should be a system of careful checks and balances to ensure the safety of the AI models.
āThe debate seems to assume that thereās this malevolent AI that somehow has desires of its own and becomes very powerful, and that we might want to switch it off,ā she says. āAnd that seems to me so implausible and so ridiculous.ā
The real problem, she believes, is that we will integrate AI into so many aspects of our lives that we become utterly reliant on it, creating issues that are likely to be less apocalyptic in nature and yet still very damaging, including racist and sexist biasesĢż“Ē°ł simply making up plausible-sounding facts.
āThe more we put it [AI] into products the harder it will be to turn it off. Not because itās this malevolent thing that has become so powerful that it takes over, but because weāve come to depend on it and itās very costly to turn off even when itās not working well,ā says VĆ©liz.
Taylor Swift didnāt respond to a request for comment.
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