UN chief warns against letting AI shape humanity's future

The head of the United Nations called on July 6 for the emergence of a global governance system that can shape artificial intelligence (AI) for the good of humanity, warning against allowing the technology to automatically shape humanity's future. As AI technology continues to advance, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that "we are conducting an experiment on our societies without any planning or consent." "This is not sustainable," he asserted at the opening of the first-ever AI Governance Global Forum in Geneva. To this event, which will be held for two days, governments, technology companies; More than 4,000 attendees representing academia and community-based organizations are gathering to begin an inclusive discussion on how best to use technology in a rapidly changing world. "The question is whether we all work together to shape this change, or whether we let that change shape us," Guterres said. He warned that AI systems are no longer tools waiting for instructions. "AI is writing its own code, moving online, and making choices with less human oversight," he said. "Our organizations are built to manage devices that follow orders. We are not ready to manage devices that can make decisions for themselves," Guterres said. Guterres expressed concern about how AI technology is making the difference between truth and error. He also warned against the growing tendency to delegate important tasks to such technology and blindly trust the results. He acknowledged that getting the device to talk to you using AI without having to write the code yourself, which he calls "vibe-coding," would be surprising. "But we can't vibe-code the truth. We can't vibe-code the future of humanity either," he said. AI technologies have great potential for everything from accelerating development to improving healthcare and making education more accessible, he said. Ref: AFP