November 2022

November 2022 sees generative AI attract serious venture capital and enterprise attention — Sequoia publishes its 'Generative AI: A Creative New World' thesis, and startups proliferate around Stable Diffusion-based image and video tooling. Beneath the optimism, foundational concerns take shape: scientists increasingly cannot explain how AI systems work; image generators are demonstrably biased and tools are launched to expose that bias; AI-assisted code writing leads to more insecure output; and the ethics of automated warfare receive renewed scrutiny. A developer's meditation on deciding not to release a Stable Diffusion app captures an emerging ethic of responsible restraint, while chatbots are seriously proposed as a tool for saving democracy — a measure of how seriously the technology was being taken, and how loosely its limits were understood.