Under the title I think, therefore I am. IA: It is time to stop and think, an article by the president of Telefónica, José MarÃa Ãlvarez-Pallete, reflects on the company’s website about the need to think about the way in which humanity is going to use advances in artificial intelligence. The manager believes that “the time has come to stop and think as only humans are capable of doing. The time has come to stop and write a new social contract. To decide and determine what are the basic rights and obligations of people and machines in this new world.”
In his article, Ãlvarez-Pallete points out that the arrival of a generative artificial intelligence already represents for many technologists, “a turning point in humanity, probably greater than what was the arrival of the printing press or nuclear fission”. “It is impossible to determine the moment when it will arrive -he warns-, but we are close. Closer and closer.” She further indicates that the learning speed of current artificial intelligence models “has increased by a factor of 100 million times in the last 10 years.” The reason for this growth is that today they train with a huge amount of data available on the internet.
The president of Telefónica recalls that “technology has always advanced humanity” and believes that a generative AI “has the ability to do so exponentially” as DeepMind did in 2021 when developing a model capable of predicting the shape of amino acids that make up proteins and raised the capacity from 30% to 60%, “with which crops resistant to climate change can be designed, new medicines developed, or enzymes capable of degrading plastic can be generated.” But he, he warns, “as has happened in previous technological revolutions, we cannot let it run wild. Not everything that technology is capable of doing is good or socially acceptable.”
Ãlvarez-Pallete considers that an AI “out of control or with a desire for power is an existential risk.” Among the dangers he exposes are the possible elaboration of molecules harmful to man or “becoming a threat to democracy through massive campaigns of systematic and undetectable disinformation” through false news and artificially created images. Another danger, in the hands of certain people, may involve “creating chemical or cybernetic weapons.” “The very companies that develop generative AI – he observes – do so without knowing how to stop the process when it acquires uncontrollable autonomy”.
For these reasons, the manager asks to focus on the social sciences and asks about ethical issues, such as the possibility of choosing the IQ of the children or feeding the AI ​​systems with data “that contain racial, gender or socioeconomic status biases.” “. “Where are essential analogue rights such as privacy, security or the right to the truth? How to defend democracy from the hybrid threats of cybersecurity and disinformation? How to ensure that data, which is part of our dignity, is part of our individual and collective sovereignty?” he asks.
There are few assurances on all issues and Ãlvarez-Pallete indicates that “it is likely that today there is no consensus on whether or not a moratorium on the advancement of AI is necessary.” For example, he notes that if “one part of humanity decides to declare this moratorium, the other part will have a decisive competitive advantage and it could create a destabilization of the global geopolitical order.”
His approach is that this “is a matter of values. We must put people at the center. The rights of people above any other criteria. Today it is not like that.” Finally, he claims that Descartes’ quote translated from Latin as “I think therefore I am” has a more accurate expression in “I think and, therefore, I am”. “Existing is not the same as being. Machines may think and may exist. But the human being, because he can think and feel, is”, he concludes.
