GENEVA, Switzerland – The UN telecoms company chief warned Thursday of the toll synthetic intelligence may tackle societies, however mentioned her best concern stays the large variety of folks with out entry to digital applied sciences.
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) estimates that round 2.6 billion folks worldwide stay offline and unable to entry the advantages of digital expertise.
“They have never, ever connected to the internet,” company chief Doreen Bogdan-Martin instructed reporters in Geneva.
That, she mentioned, is “what keeps me up at night … because if you’re not part of the digital world, then you’re not part of the AI world”.
“This is really one of the biggest challenges of our generation.”
The United Nations is aiming to lift $100 billion by 2026 in direction of bridging the worldwide digitalization hole.
Bogdan-Martin estimated although that greater than 4 occasions that quantity was wanted to actually bridge the divide.
The yawning hole will probably be felt ever extra acutely with the unfold of quickly evolving generative AI expertise, the UN official mentioned.
Bogdan-Martin pointed to the numerous methods AI may rework societies, together with boosting the struggle towards local weather change and poverty, whereas enhancing training and well being care.
But whereas there are “incredible opportunities”, she warned that “there are risks, and we need to be able to manage and mitigate the risks”.
In a busy yr of high-stake elections all over the world, she cautioned that “emerging technologies like artificial intelligence can be used to erode trust in our elections, in our institutions”.
It may, she mentioned, “threaten our jobs, our privacy, and I think also our very future.”
Speaking a day earlier than International Women’s Day, she highlighted the “huge” gender bias discovered within the algorithms utilized by the world’s hottest AI instruments.
A research printed Thursday by the UN cultural company UNESCO discovered that algorithms utilized by OpenAI and Meta confirmed “unequivocal evidence of prejudice against women”.
Bogdan-Martin, the primary lady to function ITU secretary-general within the group’s almost 160-year historical past, mentioned a serious drawback was that “women are less connected (and) women are less represented in this sector”.
Women make up “a disproportionate” share of the offline inhabitants and “there are not enough women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), there are not enough women in AI, there are not enough women in quantum, not enough women in space”.
“When it comes to the data, the algorithms, we need to have more women at the table.”
In explicit, she mentioned, “we need to get more women in AI, like, now”. — Agence France-Presse
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
