UNITED NATIONS, July 1 (Xinhua) -- The UN Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence (AI) officially released its preliminary report on Wednesday, days before the first Global Dialogue on AI Governance scheduled for Geneva next week.
The report, "Preliminary Report of the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI: Evidence-based assessment of opportunities, risks and impacts of AI," presented an independent scientific assessment of the capabilities and the emerging opportunities and risks of AI, providing a shared evidence base to help UN member states navigate a rapidly changing technology.
"This collaborative effort to build a shared understanding of AI arrives at a critical inflection point," the panel said in a press release.
Governments are making consequential decisions about AI under great uncertainty with rapidly changing, often conflicting sources of evidence and perspectives that do not necessarily reflect local realities. As the capabilities of AI continue to grow, so do the stakes for the decisions being made around the world, which is the core challenge the panel aims to address, according to the release.
In the preliminary report, the panel outlined its findings across seven key domains: AI science, advances and trajectories; societal applications, including science, health, education and agriculture; economic implications; security, systems and environmental implications; human rights, information and democracy; cultural and individual flourishing, autonomy and child safety; management, governance and reliability.
The panel identified a crucial evidence challenge for decision-makers around the world: policymakers need scientific evidence to effectively govern AI, but by the time the evidence is clear, it may be too late to act on it, said the release. "Whether AI's promise is equitably realized will depend on the informed decisions nations make together and the shared scientific foundation that guides them -- the very evidence base that the Panel's work is designed to offer."
Yoshua Bengio, co-chair of the scientific panel on AI, said in the release: "AI capabilities are outpacing both scientific understanding and governments' ability to adapt. With growing evidence of deceptive AI behavior, science currently cannot guarantee that as capabilities continue to increase, AI will not cause catastrophic harm, either on its own or due to malicious users. To act effectively, global policymakers must understand these systems."
Maria Ressa, another co-chair of the panel, said, "the technology is transformative," but warned that "if the world keeps moving along this trajectory, humanity will fail to realize the gains it promises. The risks ... are too high, and the forces driving AI forward are not the forces that will deliver its benefits."
"The world cannot govern what it cannot understand," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was quoted in the release as saying: "The Panel's report provides independent science, drawn from every region, and available to every government. Its message is clear: the potential is great, but the risks are real, and the cost of waiting is rising. I urge all leaders to use this shared evidence to act together, and without delay." ■
