BARI, Italy (AP) — Pope Francis is no stranger to artificial intelligence. Last year, a deepfake photo of him wearing a white down jacket went viral. AI concerns go far beyond bad-looking shots And now, G7 Summit.
Pope Francis is scheduled to address leaders at their annual G7 meeting in southern Italy on Friday, the first time he has done so, and he will use the opportunity to join a chorus of countries and international organizations pushing for stronger guardrails for AI in the wake of the boom in generative artificial intelligence sparked by OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT.
In his annual peace message this year, the Argentine Pope Call for an international treaty to ensure AI safety He argues that technologies developed and used ethnically, devoid of human values such as compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness, are too dangerous to be allowed to develop unchecked.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni They invited Pope Francis and announced their participation, recognizing that his star power and moral authority could potentially influence the connection between widely shared concerns about AI and his papacy's priorities on peace and social justice.
“The pope is, well, a very special kind of celebrity,” said John Kirton, a political scientist at the University of Toronto who heads the G7 Research Group think tank.
Kirton recalled that the last summit with such star power was the 2005 conference at Gleneagles in Scotland, where members decided to cancel $40 billion in debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The summit was preceded by the Live8 concert in London, which featured performances by Sting, The Who and a reunited Pink Floyd, and drew over one million people to show solidarity against hunger and poverty in Africa.
“Gleneagles has really hit a home run and is, for some, one of the most successful summits,” Carton said.
There is no such public pressure on the G7 leaders. Italian city PugliaBut Pope Francis is expected to use his moral authority to renew his call for safeguards against AI and to highlight the threat it poses to peace and society.
Generative AI technology has astonished the world with its ability to generate human-like responses, but it has also raised concerns about AI safety and disrupted global efforts to rein it in.
Some worry about catastrophic but distant risks to humanity, such as the potential for AI to create new biological weapons or spread disinformation, while others worry about the impact of AI on everyday life, such as algorithmic bias leading to discrimination or jobs being lost to AI systems.
Pope Francis echoed these concerns and raised others in his message of peace, saying AI must prioritize the protection of fundamental human rights, the promotion of peace, and the prevention of disinformation, discrimination, and distortion.
On the regulatory front, Francis will in some ways be preaching to the faithful, as G7 countries have been at the forefront of discussions on AI surveillance.
Japan, which held the G7 presidency last year, launched the Hiroshima AI Process to develop international guidelines and a code of conduct for AI developers. Global regulatory framework announced Generative AI is a system that can rapidly generate new text, images, video, or audio in response to prompts or commands.
The European Union has a wide range of AI law to be implemented over the next two years The law covers any AI products or services offered in the 27 EU member states and imposes restrictions based on the level of risk.
In the United States, President Joe Biden Presidential Order on AI Safety And we called for legislation to strengthen it, but some states California and Colorado They have tried to pass their own AI bills, but with mixed results.
Antitrust Enforcement On both sides of the Atlantic It has become Scrutinizing major AI companies Microsoft, Amazon, Open AI about whether their dominant position stifles competition.
The UK has launched a global conversation to rein in some of AI's most impactful areas. Last fall's summit was extremely dangerous. in Follow-up Meeting In Seoul, companies pledged to develop the technology safely. France is set to host the next conference in the series early next year. The United Nations is also First Resolution About AI.
On the sidelines of his AI speech, Francis will hold bilateral talks throughout the day, meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as invited leaders of Algeria, Brazil, India, Kenya and Turkey. He will also meet with other G7 members, including Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron.
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Chang reported from London.
