Are the ethical fears about the frenetic development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) misplaced? Different answers to this question could, of course, come from various quarters.
However, what is undeniable is that the question cannot be ignored by serious-minded policymakers.
It has become a central question of development and, indeed, an issue for the future of humanity.
For instance, Pope Francis has called for a global treaty to regulate artificial intelligence in statement that draws a crucial link between the technology and peace. What the Pope is proposing is a deal that would be binding on all nations.
In the loud and clear statement, which was made to celebrate the Catholic Church's World Day Peace on January 1, the pontiff said inter alia: "The global scale of artificial intelligence makes it clear that, alongside the responsibility of sovereign states to regulate its use internally, international organisations can play a decisive role in reaching multilateral agreements and coordinating their application and enforcements."
The Pope warned against the reckless replacement of human values with algorithms, thereby posing a catastrophic threat to human existence. According the Pope, the seeming surrender to machine could lead to "technological dictatorship."
Incidentally, in the last few weeks tech companies have been reporting advances in the application of their technologies. These include discoveries by OpenAI. About the same time, the Google owner Alphabet (GOOGL.O) launched a new AI model called Gemini to compete with OpenAI.
So the call from the Vatican for caution was timely in every respect.
Lest the Pope January 1 statement is dismissed as a religious hostility to science and technological advancement, it should be noted that in different tones similar views have been expressed by even veterans of Silicon Valley and secular thinkers and scholars around the world.
Indeed, the techno-ethical anxiety of the Pope is shared by governments in advanced capitalist countries.
The challenge of the moment is how to resolve the dialectical contractions between the awesome promise of the technology on the one hand and its enormous peril on the other hand. What will happen if the development of the technology is left unguarded? The question is where to apply the break to the massive erosion of humanity while applying a technology that is capable of responding to queries and holding intelligent conversations like human beings and could write its own computer code.
Whatever happened to the human freedom of choice?
It was in the context of this global anxiety on the mega trends in technology that a provisional, but notable, agreement was reached recently by the European Union on the regulation of the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) . The deal covers such matters as AI-based systems, ChatGPT and biometric surveillance.
The impact of the technology in different aspects of life - social, political and economic- could be immense depending on the situation of different countries.
As it was pointed out on this page last Wednesday, climate change and AI have been rated as the two most important stories of 2023 by some scientific pundits. In making projections for 2024, there are fears AI could play disruptive roles in important elections involving about 3.5 billion people in countries practising liberal democracy. That is almost half of humanity. Here we are talking of elections in India, United States, possibly the UK, EU and others. The negative role of misinformation and the circulation of fake videos on the internet has been documented in elections. With AI, worse things could happen in future elections. Application of technology in elections may be become less fool-proof with development of AI.
In fact, the role of technology in the 2023 elections should be critically examined beyond the partisan demonisation of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC)'s chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu.
The degree of application of technology is still a matter of debate in some liberal democracies because of the danger involved.
Legitimate fears are being expressed by scholars in various fields ranging from economics, political science, psychology, philosophy, arts, neuroscience etc. about excessive automation and increasing surveillance as well as the loss of privacy with extreme data collection. It has been observed that rather ensuring social inclusion, digital technologies have been found culpable of undermining democracy and deepening inequality. A scholar, Yanis Varoufakis, has described the activities of the tech giants in a new book entitled "Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism." The profiteering on data amassed by exploiting subscribers' privacy has been dubbed "serfdom" by some critics.
In response to this trend a scholar has warned that AI should not be trusted until there is sufficient guarantee about the transparency required for its adoption in any setting. To strike a balance between humanity and technology in framing policies is squarely the business of government. It is not a matter to be left for tech giants or start-ups. It is the business of regulators. It is dangerous for societal interest for businesses to resist regulation blindly in this matter. Legislations should be firmly put in place to ensure control.
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In the 2024 Budget, N28 billion was proposed for the ministry of Communication and Digital Economy. Out of this figure only N7.5 billion is for capital expenditure while N20 .9 billion is for recurrent expenditure. In the agenda of President Bola Tinubu, a section is devoted to the "Digital Economy: Taking the Advantage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution." The manifesto embodies a promise to create one million jobs within 24 months by the providing the environment to bolster new technologies that could "fast track business growth and diversification." Also contained in the manifesto are plans to build the capacity of youths, build infrastruture and promote e-commerce. Other components of the agenda are the development of a national broadband and the adoption of a national blockchain strategy.
However, this is not yet an articulated policy to meet the challenges posed by the unrestrained development of AI. From China to America, governments are articulating policies to meet the challenge.
The import of the apprehensions being expressed by AI is that Nigeria should articulate its own clear policy on AI to protect the economy, polity and society. This is something the policymakers should think about as the administration's agenda is being executed.
