An intergovernmental body must be created to manage the risks and benefits of new digital technologies such as ChatGPT and social networks, which now represent a challenge as big and complex as that of climate change for which the United Nations has established the IPCC. This appeal was launched in the journal Nature by a group of American experts led by Joseph Bak-Coleman of Columbia University in New York.
Their commentary article highlights how search engines, social media, online banking services and even new language models like ChatGPT are bringing great benefits to society, but not without risks. ‘The use of these technologies has hard-to-predict consequences that span generations and continents,’ the experts write. “Just as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conducts assessments of global environmental change that inform evidence-based policymaking, a similar group is now needed to understand and address the impact of emerging information technologies on systems social, economic, political and natural world”.
According to experts led by Bak-Coleman, technology companies use “tactics to influence the debate about the tools they are developing” and the data required by independent researchers and organizations to evaluate and mitigate the associated risks is generally not available. From this point of view, an intergovernmental group could have more weight and be more effective in convincing technology companies to share their data.
An initiative similar to the one proposed, the experts explain, has already been born in Washington: it is the non-profit organization PeaceTech Lab, led by executives who collaborate (or have collaborated in the past) with Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. “However, we wonder if such a group can work independently,” the experts point out.
Source: Ansa
I am a journalist with over 6 years of experience working in the news industry. I currently work as an author for Global Happenings, and my coverage focuses on Technology news. I have written for various publications, including Reuters, The New York Times and The Guardian.
