As artificial intelligence accelerates productivity, the painstaking but often slow nature of relations with other countries, as well as policy-making, is also forced to speed up.
But the group at the forefront of these changes at the BRIDGE summit in Abu Dhabi, which brings together creators, policymakers, investors, technologists, media institutions and cultural leaders from around the world to discuss the future of media, said the rapid change is not without consequences.
“Decision makers are being asked to make decisions very quickly based on information that cannot be verified or verified,” Elizabeth Churchill, a professor of human-computer interaction at the Mohamed bin Zayed University for Artificial Intelligence, told moderator Nikhil Kumar, executive editor of TIME magazine, which is a media partner of the BRIDGE summit.
Churchill, who has held senior positions at companies such as Google and Yahoo, said she returned to academia to explore transparent and “interrogative” artificial intelligence tools and content that is actually watermarked so decision makers can immediately understand whether information is trustworthy. She said the current information quality deficit is “very much a design issue that underlies all the tools we use and the diplomatic conversations that many different people use.”
The rate of technology diffusion varies in different parts of the world and depends on the available infrastructure. Kate Cullot focused on expanding access to technology in Africa and the Global South, and as CEO and founder of data infrastructure startup Amini, she reflected on how the continent remains data-starved and how it needs localized data ecosystems to accelerate its development.
“When we think about equity, we need to think about where we're starting from a regional perspective and how much catching up we have to do,” Cullot said.
Where these technologies come from and who created them also matters, he said. Noam Persky, executive vice president of Palantir Technologiesa Denver software company behind many government data mining systems. He said he sees the world could be divided into Chinese and US artificial intelligence ecosystems, but is also looking at the possibility of creating a “tripolar” world with the Middle East continually investing in new technologies.
But for Persky, what's critical is this: “How do you take these technologies and apply them to keep people safe, fight terrorism and other missions – now how do you apply them to keep businesses running, to compete in the global ecosystem? And it's about how these technologies fit into the real world.”
Technological advances must learn to localize, Palantir's Persky said, reflecting on the company's global presence. “A lot of it depends on the culture,” he said. “How receptive is the culture to change?”
Cullot added that developers in Silicon Valley should also consider any biases and narratives about the Global South to make it easier for those regions to adopt technologies like artificial intelligence. “Africa should not be an afterthought for them,” she said.
But more broadly, conversations about new technologies should focus on value systems and improving literacy, Churchill said, which would improve human control.
“If we don't speak up and get involved in governance and policy making and the participation of individuals and groups,” she said, “then we will also be held accountable for things not being fair, things being unequal, and some dangerous potential for artificial intelligence systems.”
