“The existential risk does not come from a robot-created Armageddon that will lead to our demise. The real existential risk is that we will all go crazy because we can’t believe what we see, hear or read… The fact that we have raised this conversation on a global level gives me great hope. The media has a very important role to play and it must reclaim its role as the “fourth estate” and we need it now more than ever. There are many ways to fact check the news, and that is what serious media organizations should be doing,” said Carme Artigas, co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence Advisory Body.
The Advisory Body is composed of AI experts from both the Global North and Global South, private and public sector representatives, and academia. AI “requires governance” and the creation of globally agreed rules of use to solve problems and eliminate risks. Experts of the Advisory Body also emphasize that measures must be taken to ensure that absolutely everyone, and not certain groups of the population, can use the capabilities of AI.
Artigas is recognized as one of the leading experts in the field of artificial intelligence. In 2020, after several years of working in the private sector, she was appointed as Spain’s first Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence. She emphasizes that AI can become a critical tool for maintaining democracy, since it will make the knowledge accumulated by humanity available to everyone. In addition, AI will have a very positive impact on the healthcare industry and will help prevent diseases, improve diagnostics, and reduce costs at the same time.
Seidina Moussa Ndiaye from Senegal is one of the Global South representatives on the AI Advisory Body. He was involved in the development of the Pan-African AI Strategy. In his opinion, artificial intelligence will help African states solve many problems, in particular in agriculture and healthcare. But at the same time, Ndiaye warns of the possibility of a new “colonization” of the continent using this tool.
“Much of the data currently generated in Africa belongs to multinational corporations whose infrastructure is developed outside the continent, where most African artificial intelligence experts also work. This is a loss of African talent,” says Ndiaye. “Ultimately, large AI multinationals will impose their solutions on the entire continent, leaving no room for local solutions,” he adds.
As a continent with enormous development potential and a large young population interested in AI, Africa could become a critical testing ground for new technologies, Ndiaye said. However, any projects in this area must be regulated, the expert emphasizes. “If this is not controlled, we may end up with tests being carried out on humans using chips or even integrated biotechnological elements. These are technologies that we are not good at. From a regulatory perspective, there are certain aspects that have not been taken into account,” he explains.
UNESCO, in turn, calls on governments to introduce appropriate regulations and provide teacher training to ensure a human-centered approach to the use of generative AI in education. To this end, UNESCO is publishing the world’s first Guide to Generative AI in Education and Research to address the disruption caused by generative AI technologies.
The first sections of the UNESCO Guide explain what generative AI is and how it works. The following sections delve into the controversy surrounding generative AI and its implications for education, particularly how it is exacerbating the digital divide. Modern ChatGPT models are indeed trained on online user data that reflects the values and dominant social norms of the Global North.
The UNESCO Guide goes on to outline seven key steps that governments should take to regulate generative AI and create a policy framework for its ethical use in education and research, including by adopting global, regional or national data protection and privacy standards. It also sets an age limit of 13 for using AI tools in the classroom and calls for teacher training on the subject.
