First step toward a balance between society and technology
Tensions and feelings of unease between humans and machines are nothing new. There has long been a love-suspicion relationship between the two. Every generation holds some nostalgic sentiment for the time prior to the most recent wave of technological advancements entering our lives, only to realize that there is no reverse button to press.
There is also the fear that machines have the ability to threaten our ways of life, and indeed life itself. The French author, Jules Verne, laid much of the foundations for modern science fiction, and 120 years after his death his books seem all the more profound. He put it quite succinctly when he said: “In consequence of inventing machines, men will be devoured by them.”
This is of course very much the case on the battlefield, and even holds true for the cars on our roads. But it is also true that technological innovations in medicine, education, industry, and even entertainment have prolonged, improved, enriched and, in some cases, transformed our lives for the better.
The latest technological development to instill in us both immense expectations and the fear of the unknown, is artificial intelligence, and artificial general intelligence, which is a hypothetical type of AI capable of matching or exceeding human cognitive abilities.
The potential of these new technologies is vast, in every walk of life, as they can improve processing efficiency, nurture innovation, minimize errors, perform risky tasks, and are capable of addressing complex issues more quickly and proficiently.
However, the fear that these technologies — these machines, if you like — are being designed to eventually operate autonomously brings to the minds of many Mary Shelley’s fictional tale of Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who dared defy nature’s boundaries by creating life from inanimate matter, and whose story ends in tragedy for both the monster and its creator.
The Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris this month convened to prevent similar, real-life tragedies through the regulation of technology, but within a regulatory regime that will not be an encumbrance on the development of this fast-evolving technology.
The aim, as stated at the conclusion of the summit, is to ensure that AI is “open,” “inclusive” and “ethical.” The meeting and its concluding statement were both very welcome developments, because for the first time there was an international understanding and acknowledgment of the need for global governance to regulate revolutionary technologies capable of changing society as we know it, but also for oversight that stops short of preventing such advances from realizing their full potential, especially when they are employed in the service of society.
The aim is to move forward at a fast pace, but also to create the necessary breathing space to assess the implications for humanity of each new development along the way; in the case of AI, we might be prompted to ask ourselves what it means to be human, and to ponder the relationship between humanity and such advanced technology.
Some technological developments represent incremental changes that are easier to digest and, if necessary, can be reversed. But AI is not one of them. It already represents a paradigm shift and what we are witnessing now is only the prelude to potentially infinite prowess.
On the one hand, AI can assist with tasks that endanger human safety or health, such as rescue operations, bomb disposal, the management of toxic materials, or complicated surgical procedures in the operating theater that not even the steadiest of surgeon’s hands could perform.
Nevertheless, AI systems lack transparency or accountability, and if and when they become completely autonomous, they could represent a rival “civilization” to that of us humans.
Innovation and technological advances will continue and present us with new opportunities and fresh challenges.
Yossi Mekelberg
Lack of transparency in AI means that we do not have full knowledge of the reasons for its decisions and actions. We require this so that we can ensure these decisions and actions are reliable and ethical and, more importantly, that those who are affected by them have full knowledge of the reasons behind them.
Our experience of social media, for instance, was that we believed, at least during the early “age of innocence” of these platforms, that they were all about building social networks, disseminating knowledge, providing entertainment, keeping up with friends and family, and so forth.
We discovered, however, that they are really massive data-collection machines that can be misused, in some cases to bombard us with commercial information. Even worse, we realized they can be exploited by others — for example, foreign governments or business interests — to manipulate our opinions, including during election cycles.
Increasingly, content on social networks is not moderated. This is defended using the spurious argument of “freedom of speech,” while exposing users, including children, to all sorts of unverified claims that could result in people adopting twisted views of the world.
The big tech companies are not interested in regulation because it can limit their profits. However, the result of unregulated progress, particularly regarding the near-infinite power of AI, might well be to change society beyond all recognition.
Moreover, if AI is able to make autonomous decisions, who is accountable when things go wrong? Is it those who created those machines? Is it those who pushed the power button to switch them on, or maybe their superiors? The data providers? Or is it those who failed to regulate the machines?
In education, especially studies for advanced degrees in which there has been a growing trend of moving away from exams in favor of assignments completed outside of class, the introduction of generative AI puts at risk the trust between students and teachers, and generally harms the learning experience and the development of necessary skills.
In the field of medicine, many ethical questions have been raised, including whether AI can or should be trusted to make autonomous decisions on matters of life and death, and who would be accountable for those decisions.
In addition, there is the issue of the disturbingly high levels of energy consumption by AI technologies; some experts have described this as catastrophic for the continuing efforts to tackle climate change.
Between the extremes of those who are opposed to technological advancements as a matter of principle (and AI is certainly a technological leap of faith) and those who are equally entrenched in their opposition to any form of legislation or regulation, for ideological reasons or out of an obsession with maximizing profits, there lies a third option, suggested by the Paris statement.
Innovation and technological advances will continue and present us with new opportunities and fresh challenges, but this time we should dispense with the fantasy that the industry in which they are happening is sufficiently socially aware or concerned about putting humanity and ethical values above their business interests and pursuit of power.
The Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, and its conclusions, might therefore have been the first sign of a growing recognition among governments worldwide that they have a role to play in this new industrial revolution that is upon us.
It is a lesson they have learned from previous paradigm shifts about the relationship between humans and machines, one of “respect and suspect,” in equal measure, so that we can maximize the benefits of AI without losing our humanity along the way.
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Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News’ point of view