There have been many disturbing events in 2023 that have hit the World Wide Web with a series of scandals, propaganda and incitement to hatred.
Every year, the American magazine Wired compiles a list of the most dangerous people, groups and organizations on the Internet that endanger people’s lives or destabilize the world with their actions. In 2023, Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Sam Altman, including Elon Musk, were put on the same level as the terrorist organization Hamas and hacker groups, which caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
Elon Musk
A year ago, many people viewed Elon Musk as a tech genius who occasionally acted like an internet troll. According to media observations, in 2023 these trends have taken over his public identity.
On a personal whim, Elon Musk renamed the popular social network Twitter When advertisers complained about his behavior, the businessman managed to simultaneously apologize and say “Go to hell” in one address. And this is despite Elon Musk admitting in July that the social network’s advertising revenue had halved. All of this raises concerns that X-Twitter may not survive the reign of its new owner.
In the midst of this crisis, Elon Musk’s new startup xAI launched an AI chatbot called Grok; Musk himself also said that it has fewer guardrails than OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Around the same time, a scandal broke out regarding the Neuralink project, in which several monkeys died during experiments on the implantation of brain implants.
In mid-December, Tesla recalled nearly all car models sold in the United States to fix the Autopilot feature. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that Tesla did not take adequate precautions to ensure drivers were paying attention; Many of these drivers are likely to be quite careless due to Elon Musk’s claims about the safety of the technology.
Important
Donald Trump
In 2015, former US President Donald Trump was not included on the Wired list for the first time. Now, 11 months before the 2024 presidential election, he has begun attacking what he sees as rivals via the right-wing online platform Social Truth.
Donald Trump had promised in his posts that if he was elected, a federal investigation would be launched against media companies and journalists who criticized him and current President Joe Biden would be brought to justice. He criticized the wife of one of the judges overseeing the civil fraud case and accused his political opponents of fabricating criminal cases in which he faces charges of election interference and mishandling classified information. The former president is also repeating his claims of victory in the 2020 election, which the U.S. Justice Department said precipitated the Jan. 6, 2021, raid on the U.S. Capitol.
Donald Trump is currently leading Republican primary polls by a wide margin. Wired fears that thanks to his activities on the Internet, the politician can find more supporters and become US president again, despite all his previous mistakes.
Sam Altman
He is one of the founders and CEOs of OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT), perhaps the most advanced technology in the world in developing artificial intelligence, the most revolutionary technology in history. Wired sees this as reason enough to consider Sam Altman one of the most dangerous people in the world; not only this year, but also in human history.
If you ignore the threat posed by artificial intelligence, Sam Altman, as the CEO of OpenAI, might seem like the most charitable character you could imagine. He gave up his stake in the company and called for greater government control over artificial intelligence in interviews and hearings in the US Congress. Perhaps he truly believes in a bright future where humans can coexist with artificial intelligence.
However, the power struggle within OpenAI in November revealed the negative side of Sam Altman and his supporters. Altman has argued in the past that OpenAI’s strange structure, in which a for-profit company controls a for-profit company, offers a kind of self-containment that will keep the company’s technological ambitions under a safety leash. But when Altman was fired by OpenAI’s board and almost immediately regained control of the company, he fired several board members, including two influential altruists who supported this approach.
“OpenAI is now firmly under the control of one man and his executive team, as well as its corporate ally and $2.8 trillion investor Microsoft, so let’s hope his plan to develop this world-changing technology works out.” In any case, it will be very difficult to stop him,” Wired writes.
We have previously written about why Sam Altman is afraid of artificial intelligence. According to him, technology can cause great harm to people if it falls into the hands of criminals.
Source: Focus
Ashley Fitzgerald is an accomplished journalist in the field of technology. She currently works as a writer at 24 news breaker. With a deep understanding of the latest technology developments, Ashley’s writing provides readers with insightful analysis and unique perspectives on the industry.