This text is from a particular report on the Athens Democracy Discussion board, which gathered specialists final week within the Greek capital to debate international points.
Moderator: Liz Alderman, chief European enterprise correspondent, The New York Occasions
Speaker: Nick Clegg, president, international affairs, Meta
Excerpts from the Rethinking A.I. and Democracy dialogue have been edited and condensed.
LIZ ALDERMAN A.I. clearly holds monumental promise and may do all types of latest issues. A.I. may even assist us presumably remedy a few of our hardest issues. Nevertheless it additionally comes with dangers, together with manipulation, disinformation and the existential risk of it being utilized by dangerous actors. So Nick, why ought to the general public belief that A.I. will probably be a boon to democracy, reasonably than a possible risk in opposition to it?
NICK CLEGG I believe the general public ought to proceed to order judgment till we see how issues play out. And I believe, like several main technological innovation, know-how can be utilized for good and for dangerous functions, can be utilized by good and dangerous individuals. That’s been the case from the invention of the automobile to the web, from the radio to the bicycle. And I believe it’s pure to concern the worst, to try to anticipate the worst, and to be fearful notably of applied sciences that are troublesome to understand. So I believe it’s not stunning that in current months, actually since ChatGPT produced its massive language mannequin, quite a lot of the main target has centered on potential dangers. I believe a few of these dangers, or no less than the way in which a few of them are being described, are working actually fairly far forward of the know-how, to be candid. You understand, this concept of A.I.’s creating a form of autonomy and an company of their very own, a type of demonic want to destroy humanity and switch us all into paper clips and so forth, which was various the type of early dialogue.
ALDERMAN We haven’t reached “Terminator 2” standing.
CLEGG Yeah, precisely. As a result of these are programs, bear in mind, which don’t know something. They don’t have any actual significant company or autonomy. They’re extraordinarily highly effective and complex methods of slicing and dicing huge quantities of information and making use of billions of parameters to it to acknowledge patterns throughout a dizzying array of information units and information factors.
