United Nations (UN) Secretary General António Guterres proposed a global pact on Monday to manage digital technologies, including the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which the organization said could bring threats that are difficult to overcome.
Guterres, who in 2021 proposed a Digital Global Compact that already advocated promoting AI regulation, today laid out his ideas on how to do it in a 30-page document.
The intention of the United Nations is that governments, the private sector and civil society can adopt this great agreement in September 2024, during the Summit of the Future convened by the UN.
Although the Digital Global Compact proposed by Guterres is very broad, one of its most prominent axes is that of Artificial Intelligence, especially after the rapid advances that have been recorded in recent months.
“We are beginning to realize the dimension of its disruptive potential, both positive and negative, but we have not yet met to consider the problems and collaborate in the identification of risks and agile ways to mitigate them”, explained the former Portuguese prime minister.
Guterres stressed that “a digital threshold has recently been crossed, with the widespread use of generative AI in the form of ChatGPT [um sistema que simula conversas e produz conteúdos] and many other applications”, a technology that will have a great impact, but that, according to him, it is not clear if it will be positive.
“The prospect of further technological progress has often generated more fear than hope. Even those who have developed AI and benefited most from it have expressed deep concern and have called, even pleaded, for governance action,” he noted. .
Guterres considers it necessary to guarantee that the design and the use of AI are transparent, secure and under the control of humans who can be held accountable, for which reason it is committed to combining international guidelines and standards, national regulatory frameworks and technical standards in a framework that facilitates “agile” management. of these new technologies.
In general, Guterres seeks cooperation between the authorities and the industry itself.
Thus, among the actions it proposes are the urgent start-up of research work with companies to guarantee that AI systems are safe and aligned with human values or the constitution of a high-level advisory group with experts that meets regularly to address these issues.
In addition, it asks governments to develop – together with the industry – guidelines that guide the development of AI or to make commitments to strengthen transparency and include human rights and ethics teams in this work.
Finally, the leader of the United Nations calls for consideration of “the prohibition of the use of technological applications whose potential or impact cannot be justified under international human rights law”, although he did not go into details.
In recent years, the UN Secretary General has been warning, for example, of the risk of so-called autonomous weapons, military systems guided by artificial intelligence that can make their own decisions when launching an attack.
Source: TSF
