AI Now 2023 Landscape: Confronting Tech Power

Artificial intelligence
1
is captivating our attention, generating both fear and awe about what’s coming
next. As increasingly dire prognoses about AI’s future trajectory take center stage in the headlines
about generative AI, it’s time for regulators, and the public, to ensure that there is nothing about
artificial intelligence (and the industry that powers it) that we need to accept as given. This watershed
moment must also swiftly give way to action: to galvanize the considerable energy that has already
accumulated over several years towards developing meaningful checks on the trajectory of AI
technologies. This must start with confronting the concentration of power in the tech industry.
The AI Now Institute was founded in 2017, and even within that short span we’ve witnessed similar hype
cycles wax and wane: when we wrote the 2018 AI Now report, the proliferation of facial recognition
systems already seemed well underway, until pushback from local communities pressured government
officials to pass bans in cities across the United States and around the world.
2 Tech firms were
associated with the pursuit of broadly beneficial innovation,
3 until worker-led organizing, media
investigations, and advocacy groups shed light on the many dimensions of tech-driven harm.
4