The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is undeniably transforming our society in profound ways. It is reshaping how we interact with the world and with each other. As a lawyer and an AI enthusiast, I have been observing firsthand the revolutionary impact of AI on our lives. This opinion piece takes a brief look at the multifaceted influence of AI, its challenges, and the necessity for a balanced and globally aligned approach to its development and regulation.
Hosting a Potluck Dinner
As with any technological revolution, global legislation struggles to keep pace with AI. To offer an example of how hard the struggle is, the requirements for AI chatbots were introduced into the EU AI Act at the last minute because of the emergence of AI chats during the legislation process. So, while legislators are trying to catch up, the focus is currently on national or regional regulations.
AI needs more than local regulations. AI requires a global approach because it has no borders. It is like glitter at a party: once out there, it’s everywhere, impossible to contain, and you’ll find it popping up in the most unexpected places forever. It spreads indiscriminately and expediently when allowed to flourish uncontrollably, as it is now.
AI’s borderless nature demands international cooperation in regulatory approaches. It requires multi-stakeholder dialogue on an international stage, including the likes of the UN and OECD. It should result in an alignment of laws and enforcement around the globe. Despite numerous calls for such an approach and subsequent discussions, achieving a global consensus on AI governance remains challenging at best and seems impossible at worst.
We Let the Genie Out of the Bottle
AI is increasingly influencing all facets of our lives, whether you are a student using AI to do your homework, a lawyer working on legal advice, an influencer creating social media content, or simply a consumer creating videos, voices, and images for their own use.
Although AI shows great potential, it comes with worries and even fears. It is undeniable that AI will be able to perform many tasks better and faster than a human ever could. Certain occupations will become obsolete, and others will need to adapt to working with AI. People will lose their jobs while other jobs will be created. We will need strategies to manage economic impacts and workforce transitions. Over-reliance on AI could stifle human creativity and initiative and alter how we function, think, and act. Many question whether ethics and morality can be incorporated into AI. Will AI become sentient? A threat to our existence?
The problems and proposed solutions range from actual and practical to purely academic and extremely hypothetical. We are learning on the go, yet nobody knows where we are going. We are stumbling half-blind through a haze of new technologies, using them willingly and even eagerly, getting drunk off what we are suddenly able to achieve in so much less time than before.
Double-Edged Sword
AI is already a double-edged sword that can be used for both beneficial and harmful purposes, often in the same field. For example, AI can be used for advanced fraud detection to prevent bad actors from gaining access to your bank account. At the same time, bad actors can use it to create convincing phishing emails to trick you into disclosing your bank details.
Technology like this requires adaptive laws, strategies, and guidelines for responsible management, integration, and oversight of AI development and use. Crafting AI laws that encourage innovation while mitigating risks is essential. The challenges stretch across a multitude of affected areas, from ensuring the privacy of individuals to preventing biases in AI. From questions of who owns the AI-created content to ensuring that one’s content is not illegally used by another’s AI, from figuring out how to prevent fake AI content to simply ensuring that everyone can recognize AI content.
At the same time, the already existing benefits are simply mesmerizing and cannot be ignored, even more so if we imagine the unending potential of AI in the near and distant future. Just think of its use for research and medical purposes (such as rapid diagnosis, eradicating diseases, and finding new cures), designing new energy sources, predicting floods and earthquakes, and dealing with climate change. It is mind-boggling, like being pulled into an episode of Star Trek.
So, when calls are made to pause AI development to figure out how to deal with it, many rightfully note that pausing is entirely unrealistic. At the end of the day, humans will not even be able to appropriately monitor AI; this task already by far exceeds our capabilities. So, all efforts need to be pulled towards creating AI that will help us supervise AI. In sum, AI will inevitably continue to be developed simply because the potential benefits currently outweigh the possible harms.
AI Leapt from Movies into Our Lives
I grew up watching Star Trek, wishing to have a tricorder to use, a holodeck to play in, and a computer to talk to that would solve any problem. We might not yet be able to travel light years through space and “go where no one has gone before,” but we have lived in a version of Star Trek ever since the emergence of the Internet and smart devices. Now, the game is changing again. We are barreling towards a life even closer to what we were used to seeing in sci-fi movies.
Unfortunately, we have no United Federation of Planets that would impose AI law on the entire world. So, we are stuck with the best that our world can do right now: creating local regulations for a global phenomenon. While we continue observing how our legislators are trying to catch up with the AI developers, we use AI because it can already make our lives easier and better. And between pretending and hoping that all will work out well, we sometimes ask ourselves where all this is going. Will we be fine, or will Skynet take over?
Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI,” said in an interview last year that predicting the future is like looking into a fog. You can see for about 100 yards very clearly, but nothing beyond that. The fog creates a wall that blocks your sight. He assessed that the AI wall is set for about five years from now.
As both a lawyer and an AI enthusiast, I appreciate the transformative potential of AI as well as the challenges it presents. But now, we need to focus on adapting global legal and ethical frameworks to ensure that AI benefits the entire society without compromising human rights, values, or safety. The AI trek has begun, and it promises to be as challenging as it is exciting.
- Article Credits: Alja Poler De Zwart, Partner
