Joseph Gordon-Levitt: We're "running towards" potential AI pitfalls

Joseph Gordon-Levitt told Fortune Brainstorm AI that while he has "quite a lot of optimism for AI," he also cautioned about its potential pitfalls.

Transcript

00:00I do hold quite a lot of optimism for AI.

00:05I think it could be so great in so many ways.

00:08But I also think there are probably potential pitfalls,

00:11and we're running right towards them in many ways.

00:14And I think that if we let this technology unfold

00:17driven purely by business incentives,

00:19and there's no guardrails that are put there for the public good,

00:23we could see some really dark outcomes.

00:26It's what we've seen with a lot of tech over the last 20 years.

00:29We've seen it with social media, which was so good in so many ways.

00:33And it'd be hard for you to find someone who is more positive

00:36and optimistic about social media than me.

00:38I did this online community for creativity

00:40and using social media tech called HitRecord.

00:43But obviously, we've also seen all these damaging side effects.

00:47And maybe we could have avoided some of those with some proper guardrails.

00:51And let's hope we don't make those same mistakes again.