The Secretary-General said the risks posed by artificial intelligence threaten democracy and human rights.
The UN secretary-general has warned that artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to spread disinformation and hate, and backed a proposal to set up an international watchdog to monitor AI.
Antonio Guterres spoke Monday at the announcement of a new policy on disinformation, saying technological advances have been harnessed to some advantage, but the risks posed by AI threaten democracy and human rights. rice field.
Guterres said he supported the proposal by some artificial intelligence executives to create an oversight body similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Generative AI technology, which can perform natural language processing tasks such as answering questions, summarizing text, and generating lines of code, has captivated the public since ChatGPT launched six months ago.
AI is also a focus of concern about misinformation and the ability to create deepfakes, AI-generated images and videos that mimic humans.
Take AI warnings seriously
“The alarm bells for modern artificial intelligence, generative AI, are deafening, and the developers who designed them have the loudest voices,” Guterres told reporters. “These scientists and experts are calling on the world to act, declaring that AI poses as much of an existential threat to humanity as the risk of nuclear war. We must take these warnings seriously. it won’t.”
By the end of the year, President Guterres will begin launching a high-level AI Advisory Board that will regularly review AI governance arrangements and provide recommendations on how to align with human rights, the rule of law and the common good. announced plans.
But on Monday, he added: “I am in favor of the idea that an artificial intelligence agency could be set up inspired by today’s nuclear international organizations.”
Secretary-General Guterres said such a model could be “very interesting” but that “only Member States can create it, not the UN Secretariat”. The Vienna-based IAEA he founded in 1957 promotes the safe, secure and peaceful uses of nuclear technology while monitoring possible violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty by nuclear weapons. There are 176 member countries.
Global AI safety regulations
OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, said last month that agencies like the IAEA could impose restrictions on deployments, scrutinize compliance with safety standards and track computing power usage.
British Prime Minister Rishi Snack also supports the idea, saying he wants the UK to become the home of global AI safety regulation. The UK is set to host a summit this year on how concerted international action can address AI risks.
Robert Sparrow, a professor of philosophy at Australia’s Monash University, told Al Jazeera that regulation will become a global issue and that will cause some difficulties, but he does not believe that only one agency will regulate AI. .
“We are calling for a change in culture, not just in engineering and computer science specifically, but across government and civil society,” he said.
Mr Guterres said he supported plans for a summit in Britain, adding that “serious work” should be done before that. He said he will appoint a scientific advisory board of AI experts and chief scientists from UN agencies in the coming days.
