By Busayo Onijala
Experts in Artificial intelligence (AI) and policy advocates have renewed calls for global governance frameworks to guide the development of AI.
The experts and advocates warned that unregulated innovation could worsen inequality, fuel conflicts and pose a threat to humanity.
They made the call during a high-level edition of The Global Debate, a programme produced by China Global Television Network (CGTN) on Thursday.
Experts at the event debated the motion, “Should governance be in effect before AI development?”
Opening the debate, CGTN host, Tian Wei, said AI was reshaping the world at an unprecedented pace, presenting enormous opportunities, while also posing profound risks.
Wei said AI had the potential to address global challenges such as climate change and diseases.
She, however, warned that deepfakes, biased algorithms, autonomous weapons and geopolitical competition were raising urgent concerns about regulation.
Arguing in support of the motion, Zoon Ahmed Khan, a researcher at the Centre for China and Globalisation, said governance should precede AI development to ensure technological progress served humanity.
“Without governance first, the applications of AI alone present existential threats.
“Lethal autonomous weapon systems can trigger rapid escalation in conflicts, remove human accountability from life-and-death situations and lower the threshold for war,” she said.
Khan said the dangers extended beyond warfare.
He argued that unregulated AI was already undermining efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by worsening inequality and excluding developing countries from the benefits of the technology.
According to her, history has demonstrated the dangers of allowing powerful systems to evolve without ethical safeguards.
“The choice is not between development and governance, it is between reckless development that risks instability and further inequality,” she said.
Also supporting the motion, George Galloway, a seven-term British Member of Parliament and leader of the Workers Party of Britain, dismissed comparisons between AI governance and opposition to earlier technological breakthroughs.
He argued that major technologies, including electricity, had always operated within regulatory frameworks.
“We have global governance of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and biological weapons.
“Should we leave these things to the Epstein class to decide for themselves, or do we need a global governance to control them?” Galloway asked.
However, Einar Tangen, Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, opposed the motion, arguing that technological development naturally preceded regulation.
“AI is here. It is advancing. Government is following. The natural progression is that you go forward and government needs to respond.
“But it cannot respond to that which it does not know,” he noted.
According to Tangen, AI, supported by quality data, can help solve major global challenges scientifically.
He added that fragmented national regulations could leave loopholes that irresponsible actors might exploit.
He urged governments and societies to embrace innovation rather than fear it.
Liu Shaoshan, Director of Embodied Artificial Intelligence at the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, also noted that AI is an emerging technology with impacts that are not yet fully understood.
“AI is a baby today. We are just at the very beginning of it; putting governance upon AI is like “raising the baby with ignorant parents, ‘’ Shaoshan said.
On his part, Leopold Lind, a politics and economics student at Tsinghua University, countered that governance and innovation could reinforce each other.
He argued that consumer confidence depended on safety and ethical standards.
Lind cited AI company Anthropic as an example of how prioritising safety could strengthen public trust and support innovation. (NAN) ( www.nannews.ng)
Edited by Esenvosa Izah