Artificial intelligence: a tsunami of unanswered questions - Agenda Pública

"We are no longer asking whether this new technology will revolutionise everything, because it is already obvious that it is doing so. The question is whether that transformation will be total"In any case, it is important not to succumb to doom-laden tendencies and apocalyptic prophecies. The benefits of artificial intelligence are clear. AI improves our capacity for translation and understanding, automates repetitive tasks, optimises forecasts for renewable energy demand, detects pests, droughts and potential forest fires, improving crop resilience, reduces waste in corporate supply chains, democratises access to information as never before, accelerates research in physics, astronomy, chemistry and biology, makes diagnostic medicine more accurate and faster —almost infallible— and reduces the time needed to discover useful molecules for new medicines from years to months.

"This new technology has accelerated a crisis that humans had never experienced before: a profound crisis in our capacity to pay attention"The emergence of AI has not only accelerated all these job losses, but extended them to sections of society that once believed themselves untouchable. Lawyers, doctors, consultants and engineers are watching with concern as more of their tasks are automated or replaced. Their bosses still provide added value that is difficult to replace: from organising, negotiating and taking risks to building relationships. But the automation of the production and review of reports, as well as the execution of repetitive processes, is leaving many people behind.

"The emergence of AI has accelerated all these job losses and extended them to sections of society that once believed themselves untouchable"Is a court ruling issued by a digital agent free of personal bias fairer? Who is held responsible for a war crime committed by an autonomous weapon? How much is a ministerial or corporate decision shaped when it is escalated through an organisation without meaningful human review and is based exclusively on probabilistic criteria? Once again, the answers are unclear, particularly when the temptation to gain a geopolitical advantage among actors unconstrained by democratic safeguards affects everyone else's ability to respond.

"In the past, nuclear weapons could destroy the world, but activating them required action by one or more humans whose own destruction was also guaranteed"Even so, the degree of autonomy this technology can achieve is frightening. In the past, nuclear weapons could destroy the world, but activating them required action by one or more humans whose own destruction was also guaranteed. In the words of Pope Leo XIV, AI does not know human experience because it has neither suffered nor loved. And an intelligence that cannot feel, if given access to nuclear codes, is incapable of weighing anything beyond statistical criteria when deciding whether to activate them. In such circumstances, perhaps the statistically optimal solution an AI agent might find to guarantee world peace would be to destroy the world. Who knows.

"Measures are urgently needed to restore educators to a central role and make students exercise and strengthen their cognitive abilities before entering the real world"Ultimately, there are many questions and few answers. What does seem clear, however, is that humanity's real challenge should not focus exclusively on trying to predict how far this technology can go. The real challenge is to steer that development towards a better society. That means putting AI at the service of humanity and treating it as a tool to make our lives easier.