'Society cannot function if no one is accountable for AI' — Jaron Lanier, the godfather of virtual reality, discusses how far our empathy should extend to AI in episode two of new podcast, The Ten Reckonings

Whether we like it or not, we can’t ignore AI. What started as a fun, gimmicky chatbot on our desktops, albeit one that could talk a bit like a human, is already taking jobs, accessing medical records, and reshaping workplaces. We are rapidly approaching the point where the practical realities of building and governing advanced AI systems must be confronted.

As the recent furor over indecent Grok-generated images on X, and the use of Meta AI smart glasses to record women without their permission for social media clicks has shown, the guardrails meant to help society cope with the deluge of AI devices and new technologies seem seriously lacking.

Even before the latest controversies around AI-generated images, one of the biggest shocks to me was the way some AI companies decided it was perfectly acceptable to train their models on copyrighted material from authors and artists ...