Nearly half the world’s population would have the option to vote in a national election this year. The last time many of these countries went to the polls, there was no ChatGPT.
These are the two topics that keep coming up on panels and side events on the promenade this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Often the questions are about how one would affect the other.
Some of the leaders in artificial intelligence (AI) spoke at the Bloomberg House at Davos on Tuesday. They all said they took the threat of AI on elections seriously, but were split on the likelihood of disruption.
Photo: Reuters
Microsoft Corp CEO Satya Nadella somewhat downplayed the risks.
“It’s not like this is the first election where disinformation or misinformation, and election interference is going to be a real challenge that we all have to tackle,” he said.
OpenAI Inc CEO Sam Altman echoed that sentiment, but expressed more uncertainty.
“I don’t think this will be the same as before,” he said. “It’s always a mistake to try to fight the last war.”
Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, in an interview with Bloomberg said the “bad guys will be more productive” with AI.
Meanwhile, Salesforce Inc CEO Marc Benioff said social media poses a bigger risk to the democratic process than AI does.
“Regulators have not done their job,” he said.
OpenAI, which counts Microsoft as its largest investor, is “quite focused,” Altman said, on reducing the potential for misuse of its tools, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E.
The company is soon to release for testing a tool that can identify AI-generated content and would digitally watermark material generated by DALL-E, OpenAI said on Monday.
In related news, a large number of CEOs worldwide realize the need to move fast on generative AI to stay competitive, but many agree that uncertainty makes it difficult to formulate and adopt strategies, Ernst & Young Taiwan’s (安永台灣) quarterly survey released on Thursday last week showed.
About 70 percent of the 1,200 CEOs surveyed said they realize their organizations must take immediate action to keep a competitive advantage, as generative AI proves to be an agile coadviser and multiplier in strengthening supply chains, with 99 percent of the respondents having made or planning to make significant investments in generative AI.
However, 68 percent said that the uncertainty of generative AI makes it difficult to quickly formulate and adopt strategies, while 26 percent said the rapid development of generative AI presents the biggest challenge for planning and making capital allocation decisions.
There are limitations and risks to the use of generative AI in supply chains, especially when implementation is rushed or poorly integrated across organizations and supply chain networks, Ernst & Young Taiwan said, adding that AI tools are only as powerful as their input data, making them limited to the quality and availability of data from supply chain partners.
Additional reporting by Crystal Hsu
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