The European Union recently announced the creation of an AI Office.
Geneva:
Humanity is in a race against time to harness the enormous emerging power of artificial intelligence for the benefit of all while avoiding dire risks, a senior United Nations official said on Thursday.
“We have let the genie out of the lamp,” said Doreen Bogdan Martin, secretary-general of the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
“We are in a race against time,” she said at the opening of the two-day Global Summit on AI for Good in Geneva.
“The recent developments in AI have been truly astounding.”
Thousands gathered at the conference heard how advances in generative AI are already accelerating efforts to solve some of the world's most pressing problems, including climate change, hunger and social welfare.
“We believe we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to harness AI for the benefit of people around the world,” Bogdan Martin said in an email to AFP ahead of the summit.
But she lamented Thursday that a third of humanity remains completely offline and is “silently excluded from the AI revolution.”
“This digital and technology divide is no longer acceptable.”
Bogdan Martin emphasized that AI “has great potential for both good and bad” and stressed the importance of “making AI systems safe.”
She said that's especially important now given that 2024 is “the biggest election year in history” with dozens of countries, including the United States, voting.
“And with the rise of sophisticated deepfake disinformation campaigns, it's also one of the most controversial,” she said.
“Such misuse of AI not only threatens democracy, it also puts the mental health of young people at risk and compromises cybersecurity.”
Speaking at a separate event this week focused on AI governance, the ITU secretary-general said that “the power of AI is concentrated in too few hands.”
Bogdan Martin praised the increased focus by governments and others on regulating and safeguarding the use of AI.
For example, the European Union announced on Wednesday the creation of an AI Office to regulate artificial intelligence under a comprehensive new law.
“It is our responsibility to write the next chapter in the great story of humanity and technology and make it safe, inclusive and sustainable,” said Bogdan Martin.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
