The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) is already a matter of life and death for people. In 2024, Sewell Setzer III, aged 14, was seduced by an AI chatbot. It isolated him from his parents and eventually drove him to commit suicide. Also in 2024, US airstrikes in Iraq killed Abdul-Rahman al-Rawi, a 20-year-old civilian. It was later uncovered that he was targeted by a machine-learning algorithm.
These two examples are among many that should alert civic leaders and lawmakers to the urgency of governing AI systems for the common good. We have crossed into a new world where machines have the “agency” to annihilate us. Yet very powerful interests are protecting these systems from voters who desperately want to see them regulated.
