UNITED Nations Secretary General Mr. Antonio Guterres has raised a very serious issue for the humanity to make up its mind upon. He has asked whether the humanity will shape the nature and influence of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology or allow itself to drift along swaying in its wayward growth. At a global Dialogue on AI Governance at the UN, Mr. Guterres cautioned the humanity against an uncontrolled drift caused by the raucous influence of AI whose speed of spread is stunning. “Some lines crossed cannot be uncrossed”, he warned, expecting the human intelligence to take control of things rather than get controlled and driven by technology. Mr. Guterres has issued three cautions: One, about the speed at which AI is taking control of humanity.

 

He said, in effect, that the Internet took fifteen years to reach one billion people, but AI has reached there in just two years. He added, AI systems are “No longer tools awaiting instruction; they are writing code and acting online, and making choices with less and less human oversight”. He then added, ‘Human institutions are not ready for machines that decide things for them. The second caution is about power accumulating in fewer hands -- countries and companies -- while most nations have no say in decisions that would shape their future. “When power imbalances are hard-wired into technology, inequality becomes part of the code”, Mr. Guterres has stressed. The third warning relates to truth, Mr. Guterres has stated. He has cautioned against the point when “machine-enabled lie can now persuade as effectively as the truth -- and authentic evidence can be dismissed as fake -- which further erodes the integrity of our information ecosystem”.

 

Rounding up the point, Mr. Guterres has added, “The choice before us is not between faith in AI and fear of it. It is between governing by design -- and drifting by default”. The UN Secretary General, thus, posed before the humanity a very serious issue in its bared fangs. When AI’s advent is already threatening human jobs, and when the technology is imposing new definitions of truth -- as against human wisdom, then the time appears to have come to make an informed, learned and wise choice in favour of controlling the unbridled influence of technology in the form of Artificial Intelligence. He does not discount the advantage the new technology brings along. Yet, Mr. Guterres also does not discount the disadvantage the technology heaps on the humanity if adopted thoughtlessly and aimlessly. He expects the humanity to shape its own future by conscious choice to restrict the abuse of technology, and not get shaped by the uncontrolled use of technology.

 

This issue has been tormenting the world for quite some years now. Even at the World Economic Forum a few years ago, the world leaders had expressed their serious concern about uncontrolled automation that was taking a heavy toll of human jobs. Despite all the warnings and cautions, the world is yet to come to terms with how it should handle the technology challenge. Most humans appear to be overwhelmed by the power of AI and appear to have lost the track of the truth of superior human creativity. In the process, the damage that is being caused to human welfare in long term does not seem to occupy most people’s thought-process. Mr. Guterres has issued a word of caution exactly against that danger. It is important for the world to take a pause and think deeply about multiple risks and dangers AI poses -- not as technology per se, but as a technological tool abused and misused by impatient human application. This is the danger about which the United Nations Dialogue on AI Governance has been organised where all nations “have a seat at the table”, as Mr. Guterres has insisted. It is time the world took a very serious note of the very serious issue Mr. Guterres and the UN have raised. The world must not miss responding positively to this wake up call.