The "2024 ESG Global Leaders Conference" was held on October 16-18 in Shanghai. Hao Qian, Director of Sina Finance Europe, and renowned historian, philosopher and author of the bookA Brief History of Mankind", and Yuval Hrari, author of "Homo Sapiens Above," engage in conversation.
Yuval believes thatAI（The rise of (AI) is a major challenge for humanity. However, it is undeniable that the idea that AI can benefit humanity is equally valid. When asked what role AI should play in a sustainable society, Yuval said thatAI could be the best invention in the history of mankind if it can be prevented from getting out of control and made sure that it conforms to human values.
"Because at that point, its immense power will serve human society rather than harm it", Yuval said, citing examples of areas such as healthcare, where there is currently not a sufficient number of doctors to serve patients, and where AI doctors could be of immense help.
In addition, Yuval cited the example of more than 1 million people dying in car accidents each year, most of which are caused by human error, such as drunk driving or fatigued driving. If AI controlled autonomous driving, it could save a million people a year, and although AI could also cause accidents, the total would be much less.
Similarly, when it comes to climate change, AI can help humanity find new sources of energy and better, sustainable, ways to manage the economy.
“But the big question is how to enjoy these benefits while at the same time preventing the great dangers posed by technology", Yuval re-emphasized.
Speaking about regulation of AI, Yuval emphasized that "regulation is very important and is of great interest to many governments."
He said government agencies are not sure how AI should be regulated at this time because it is new, but some regulations should be obvious, such as AI should be prohibited from pretending to be human. "We welcome AI interacting with us on social media as doctors or teachers, but it must not pretend to be human. You need to know when you're having a conversation whether the person you're talking to is a human or an AI", he explains, "On social media, a certain tweet gets a lot of attention and a lot of users click on it. You might think, everyone's interested in this, and I want to find out what people are talking about. So you start clicking on it too. In reality, it wasn't a human user who initially tweeted this content, it was a bot."
"So you need to know that it's not humans, it's robots, and then make a decision", he emphasized.Prohibiting AI from impersonating humans is an important provision.. "Just as governments have banned counterfeiting of currency to preserve trust in money, we need to ban counterfeiting of human beings to preserve trust in human beings".
Furthermore, and equally importantly, theArtificial intelligence companies are responsible for the behavior of their algorithms.. "It is important to realize that if a company produces a car that has a flawed engineering design that leads to an accident that causes injuries and deaths, then for us it is clearly the responsibility of the company, and maybe the managers have to go to jail or they have to pay a big fine, because they are responsible. If you produce a drug and that drug has side effects that cause people to get sick, then your company is clearly responsible", Yuval said, adding that the same should be true for AI algorithms. If a company develops a powerful algorithm and it has dangerous side effects on society, the human psyche or otherwise, then that company is liable and must be held accountable for the damage it causes.
Yuval reminded that AI is constantly learning and changing, and that today's AI is still only in its infancy, and that we cannot predict all the problems and threats that AI may pose in the future. Therefore, we need not just regulation, but also an organization that can be trusted, which should understand the development of AI and be able to react quickly to it.
"You can think of regulations as our teeth, but before you can have teeth, you need to see with your eyes what you're going to bite into", Yuval said, but at the moment, most of the knowledge about AI is in the hands of only a handful of companies in a handful of countries, while most of the world's people, and even most of the world's governments, don't quite understand what's going on .
Yuval noted thatThere should be a global observatory of AI development like the observatories that observe outer spaceIt can tell us what is actually happening, what are the dangers, what are the opportunities. It can tell us what is actually happening, what the cutting-edge technology is, what the dangers are and what the opportunities are.
Yuval said that it is difficult to reach some kind of global agreement in AI because you don't know if the other side is fulfilling its responsibilities. But if this global AI observatory is set up that doesn't have to regulate, but just observes what's going on and informs people, every government can commit a certain amount of money to fund this institution. It would require a lot of money to hire the best people, to bring in state-of-the-art technology, it would require a huge budget, and each government could commit a certain amount of money and easily verify that the other government fulfilled its commitment.
Finally, when asked what are the key elements of a sustainable society, Yuval responded that the key is to better understand human beings. In its view, the ultimate goal of social development is not the production of artificial intelligence, or anything else for that matter.Rather, it's about a good, happy life for mankind..
"What you really need to understand is what is the source of suffering in people's lives and what is the source of human happiness," he said, adding that while it is important to spend so much money, energy and time on developing technology and artificial intelligence, we should not lose sight of understanding and developing human beings.
"If for every dollar or minute we invested in developing AI, we also invested a dollar and a minute in understanding and developing human beings and the human mind, I think everything would be fine", he said.