Source: AFP
Humanity is in a race against time to harness the colossal emerging power of artificial intelligence for the good of all while averting dire dangers, a top UN official said Thursday.
“We let the genie out of the bottle,” said Doreen Bogdan-Martin, head of the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
“We are in a race against time,” he said at the opening of a two-day AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva.
“Recent advances in artificial intelligence have been nothing short of extraordinary.”
The thousands gathered at the conference heard how advances in genetic artificial intelligence are already accelerating efforts to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, including climate change, hunger and social care.
“I think we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to guide artificial intelligence for the benefit of all the people of the world,” Bogdan-Martin told AFP ahead of the summit.
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However, he lamented on Thursday that a third of humanity remains completely offline and “locked out from the voiceless AI revolution”.
“This digital and technological divide is no longer acceptable.”
Bogdan-Martin stressed that artificial intelligence has “enormous potential for both good and bad”, stressing that it is vital to “make AI systems secure”.
Concentrated power
He said it was especially important given that “2024 is the biggest election year in history,” with votes in dozens of countries, including the United States.
It pointed to “the rise of sophisticated disinformation campaigns in depth” and warned that “the misuse of artificial intelligence threatens democracy (and) also endangers the mental health of young people and compromises cyber security”.
Other experts at Thursday’s conference agreed.
Source: AFP
“We have to understand where we’re heading,” said Tristan Harris, a technology ethicist who co-founded the Center for Humane Technology.
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He pointed to lessons from social media — which was initially touted as a way to connect people and give everyone a voice, but which has also brought addiction, viral misinformation, online harassment and mental health problems.
Harris warned that the incentive that drove the companies developing the technology risked dramatically exaggerating such negative effects.
“The number one thing driving Open AI’s or Google’s behavior is the race to achieve market dominance,” he said.
In such a world, he said, “governance that moves at the speed of technology” is vital.
Changing the social contract
OpenAI chief Sam Altman, who rose to global prominence after launching OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, acknowledged the risks.
Speaking via video link, he told the gathering that “cyber security” was currently the biggest concern regarding the negative effects of technology.
Further down the line, he said it would likely “require some change in the social contract, given how powerful we expect this technology to be.”
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“I don’t think there won’t be jobs … but I do think the whole structure of society itself will be (open) to some degree of discussion and reshaping.”
Source: AFP
Overall, however, he insisted that from the perspective of how new technologies have historically evolved, AI systems are considered “generally safe and resilient.”
While he welcomed discussions about regulations to limit the short-term negative effects of AI, he warned that it was “difficult” to propose regulations aimed at limiting future impacts.
“We don’t know how society and this technology are going to co-evolve,” he said.
Bogdan-Martin meanwhile welcomed that governments and others had recently “scrambled to create protections” and regulations around the use of artificial intelligence.
On Wednesday, the European Union announced the creation of an AI Office to regulate artificial intelligence under a sweeping new law.
“It’s our responsibility to write the next chapter in the great story of humanity and technology, and make it safe, make it inclusive, and make it sustainable,” Bogdan-Martin said.
Source: AFP