2024, AI rising

Experts are now exploring the deployment of artificial intelligence, or AI, to pursue global peace and security as an equalizer, even as its growth and diversity in application are expected to exacerbate the already stark digital and technological divide between the haves and have-nots.

AI's use is expected to be a common feature of future elections, primarily in generating fake news as part of political maneuverings.

Similar to issues about climate change and nuclear weapons, the majority of the world will need to confront how to build a governance framework to limit the adverse actions of a few countries and private companies on the rest of the world.  

Heather Ashby, associate director of Disruptive Technologies and Artificial Intelligence at the United States Institute of Peace, said generative AI will be front and center in 2024 with the massive wave of elections worldwide.

More than 50 nations covering 2 billion people, which is unprecedented, will go to the polls in 2024.

The rise of ChatGPT will create a phenomenal shift during the political campaigns in different nations.

The proliferation of generative AI will contribute to the spread of misinformation and disinformation, particularly in elections.

State and non-state actors can use generative AI to create false content that bots, and people can spread on social media and messaging platforms.

Also, generative AI can add to the development of sophisticated deepfakes, contributing to the proliferation of misleading images and audio.

Among the most worrying phenomena is the use of so-called deepfakes that particularly target women and add another tool to the digital abuse and harassment women encounter across the world.

Another area receiving the most attention about AI concerns is its use in weapons. Brought to stark awareness of the dangers of AI is its integration into nuclear or other advanced weapons.

The US government recently advanced two efforts in this regard: The first was President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping jointly agreeing to discuss AI risks that may touch on weapons systems in the future and resume military-to-military communications, and the second involved Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Bonnie Jenkins leading efforts for a multilateral agreement on the military use of AI. Ukraine, in defense of its territory, and Israel have employed AI in weapons systems for their military operations, and Russia is potentially using these autonomous weapons in its war of aggression against Ukraine.

Ashby said another area of AI use deserving more international attention is surveillance technology.

With the rise of authoritarianism and attacks on democratic processes, AI can enhance the ability of governments to limit the space for diverse civil society groups to advance rights.

From facial recognition software and predictive policing to generative AI potentially revealing details about activists, the world is entering a period of unrestricted AI for security development.

Despite the attention on ChatGPT, more similar options are produced by companies, governments, and research organizations pulling from a tremendous volume of data from all corners of the internet in different languages.

AI for surveillance will continue to enable tracking of citizens' actions on a large scale. It will substitute for some of the work of security professionals by having the ability to review and comb through large amounts of data from images to audio, as well as predicting where crime may occur and contributing to sentencing decisions.

(To be continued)