Researcher António Branco, coordinator of the first major model of generative Artificial Intelligence for the Portuguese language, considers that this technology constitutes a threat to the sovereignty of States.
“Democratic states must accept this as a geostrategic and sovereignty issue of utmost importance,” said the professor of the Department of Information Technologies of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon in an interview with Lusa.
What is at stake is the fact that the databases are in the hands of “two or three large companies”, without public access or external supervision, which can condition the entire functioning of organizations and citizens.
“We are witnessing an inverse effect to what we were looking for with the Internet,” which is global and does not allow one user to condition the access of others, in a “completely decentralized logic.”
Now, in the case of AI, “we are doing the opposite, we are channeling it towards two or three entities that will receive the communications, the natural language conversation from everyone around the world and return it processed” in the form of useful Applications that They get people used to using them.
Because “when human beings get used to a certain level of technological intermediation, we can no longer return to the previous level,” he stated.
“This is terrifying in terms of sovereignty, it is terrifying,” said António Branco.
On the one hand, it is enough that there is “a technical problem” with one of these providers and “we cannot talk to each other”, because “data is leaking from all our conversations, important or not.” important, ideological or not. ideological, confessional or non-denominational”.
Large technology companies “keep copies of our data there and that is why we depend on this service,” which “can be cut off at any time.”
This is already happening today. “Just think that we have a nation at existential risk, which is Ukraine,” whose “war effort depends on a system of satellites that are turned on or off by decision of a person depending on whether that person believes that the battle front is on the correct address”. or in the wrong direction.”
“If geopolitics is rearranged,” “access can be conditioned.” If “we’re on a different side of the board than their side of the board, they say ‘cut there’ and we’re left completely in the dark to talk to each other to communicate,” she explained.
Today “we run the risk of subtracting sovereignty in the not very long term,” highlighted António Branco, who defends the emergence of more AI tools, with different databases.
The Portuguese State has two AI-based Chat services, one on divorce and the other on the digital mobile key, provided by OpenAI.
“No one knows” what data OpenAI collects and that is why “the Portuguese public administration is looking for conditions to free itself from this dependence on a single provider, but this has costs,” he warned.
“democratizing use and access is the antidote” and “the more entities that offer these services, the less we will transmit our data” through big technology companies.
Additionally, each country must keep the information it needs within its borders. “This is a question of the greatest relevance for democratic States,” highlighted the researcher, who cited some examples.
“The United States itself is investing, from the point of view of public money, tens of billions of dollars, despite the fact that ‘big tech’ companies have their headquarters there,” said António Branco, who also highlighted the United Kingdom in this national effort.
The large companies that manage generative language models, Google or OpenAI, are “opaque” and “it is not known what type of information they generate”, but this problem is even more aggravated in non-democratic states.
“There are three different worlds: we are here, in the West, there is China and there is Russia,” he recalled.
Source: TSF
