As per Reuters, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the 12th of June, gave his full support to a proposal by artificial intelligence (AI) executives for the creation of an international AI watchdog body like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
This call to action in this instance was because of the rise in Generative AI technology in the past half a year, with an accelerated interest in it by the public especially fueled by the launch of ChatGPT, which is an AI Chatbot that uses natural language processing to create humanlike conversational dialogue.
Adding onto the popularity of the convincing prose of ChatGPT from text prompts which made it the fastest growing app in the world in a span of six months, Generative AI has garnered attention for its ability to create Deepfake pictures, which are synthetic media that have been digitally manipulated to replace one person’s likeness convincingly with that of another.
The Necessitated Need for a Global AI Watchdog
As per Reuters, Guterres talked to the reporters about how the high level advisory body will regularly review AI governance arrangements and offer recommendations on how they can align with human rights, the rule of law as well as the common good. He plans to start the work by the end of the year on this advisory committee.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the lines of which this Global AI Watchdog is proposed, was formed in 1957 as the world’s central intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical co-operation in the nuclear field. It works for the safe, secure and peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology, contributing to international peace and security and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The Vienna based organization has 176 member states.
Guterres stated that such a model could be created by only member states and not the Secretariat of the United Nations. ChatGPT’s creator Sam Altman before the congress doubled down on this notion that a body like the IAEA could place restrictions on deployment, vet compliance with safety standards and track usage of computing power.
Guterres stated to the reporters on how “Alarm bells over the latest form of AI i.e. generative AI, are deafening. And they are loudest from the developers who designed it and those warnings must be taken seriously.”
