The story above tells a harrowingly dystopian story—one version of our future that could play out all sorts of different ways in actuality.

Generative AI is something that we can’t undo, but we still have time to imagine more thoughtful and responsible ways to deploy it. But history shows us again and again that trusting companies to self-regulate is naive. Blinded by the profit motive, they lack the ethics and the foresight to curb potential technological harms.

So where do we go from here? The experts I’ve spoken to say there needs to be an urgent public debate about generative AI. They believe there are three actionable steps we can take to prevent a social crisis of dire consequences.

CREATE CRYPTOGRAPHIC CERTIFICATION STANDARDS

To avoid the dissolution of reality, people need to be able to authenticate content captured by digital cameras and microphones. The goal of these standards is to establish a basic level of certainty that a photograph, video, or audio is real. According to Gil Perry, of Israeli AI company D-ID, detection of synthetic content will be next to impossible in the future given the fidelity of AI-generated images. Not even invisible watermarks will work because they can be falsified by bad actors.

Some companies are already at work, creating authentication around the recorded material itself. Ziad Asghar is SVP of product management at Snapdragon Technologies and Roadmap at Qualcomm, the company that designs the chips for most Android phones and many other devices. He says his company already has technology to preserve the authenticity of all the pixels and soundwaves captured by a device. It’s the same technology Qualcomm uses for secure face authentication.

A group of companies including Adobe, MIcrosoft, Intel, and the BBC are now working towards establishing standards around the authenticity of images, videos, text, and audio through the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authentication. Still, there’s no current industry standard that can certify the authenticity of this media as it transmits from device to device across the web. For that, Asghar says we need “multiple layers of security” and file formats that work similarly to NFTs, using blockchain certificates to authenticate captured images, videos, and audio files as not AI-generated or modified. “It’s a big concern for everyone,” he says. “As these [AI] technologies become more prevalent, this is going to be a challenge.”

CREATE PUBLIC AWARENESS

The second task is to launch public awareness programs so that the people understand the scope of generative AI. “The world is changing, and children are growing up in a very different place. It’s a bit scary,” Perry says. “The idea is to make AI open to the public and make everyone have access to it and get used to it, not controlled by some governments and tech giants.” Tom Graham, co-founder of Metaphysic—the company that created the viral Tom Cruise clones on TikTok— agrees that PSAs could make a difference. Recently, his company participated with their real-time AI avatars in the popular TV show America’s Got Talent. Their mission, he says, was more than promotional; he wanted to show the general public the power of this technology. “If that can help a person reduce the psychological impact [of a fake image or video], it’s positive,” he says.

NCOURAGE COLLABORATIVE LEGISLATION

Finally, we need to urge governments worldwide to collaborate with the scientific community on legislation that protects individual rights and establishes penal limits on the toxic use of generative AI. This will require companies to sit down with institutions and governments, psychologists, philosophers, and human rights organizations to ensure all sides of this technology have been considered. Emad Mostaque—CEO and founder of Stability AI—agrees that there’s a need for an open discussion around the impacts of AI, but he doesn’t believe in tightening regulation around the technology. “Open debate is always best, due to the complexity of what this could do to social composition,” he says. Graham, however, believes that “lawmakers must think about how to implement those laws as quickly as humanly possible to protect people from potential harm.”

While these measures can help to prevent a total collapse of reality, they will not prevent authoritarian regimes, organizations, and individuals from using generative AI to do harm. That’s why it is important that both the makers and consumers of AI prioritize developing new ways to protect society from the potential dangers of this technology. Only by working together and taking proactive steps to address the ethical and social implications of generative AI, can we create a future that is both technologically advanced and socially just.

Will that actually happen? It’s hard to have faith. Looking at the current uncontrolled AI craze and the general disregard for its potential effects–by both the key decision-makers and the public itself—I’m pessimistic. Is the cataclysmic chain of events outlined in this thought exercise already  all but inevitable?