The ninth edition of the AI Index Report emphasizes “That gap—between what AI can do and how prepared we are to manage it” (p. 2). In addition, this 425-page report includes chapters on AI in science and medicine for the first time.
One of the impressions this gives is that most debates about the dangers of AI and the need to put it at the service of humanity not only lag far behind its development but, rather than contributing to the intended goal, actually hinder it. There is more confidence in the European Union than in the United States or China to effectively regulate AI, but in the meantime, China and the United States are pulling further ahead of the EU in terms of development. A single company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), manufactures most of the world’s best AI chips, and U.S. companies such as Apple, NVIDIA, and AMD rely on TSMC for their advanced processors.
There is a growing divergence between the development of AI and ethical, philosophical, and sociological debates. If these debates do not improve, they will fail to have social impact, that is, they will not lead to improvements in AI and its service to humanity. Such improvement requires co-creation, which means opening up to participation through equal dialogue among all sectors of the public that are already using AI. The report notes that four out of five college students are already using AI, even as we still recall the recent debates over whether to use AI in higher education. Many readers are not surprised that public adoption of generative AI has reached 61% in Singapore, but they are surprised to see that it has reached 64% in the United Arab Emirates. In the EU, however, it has not reached 40%.
It is urgent to improve these debates and achieve regulations that have a real social impact on the use of AI by all citizens, and that move away from a potential dynamic that would result in the debates remaining merely a critical commentary on its development. If the debate is dominated by intellectuals who consider themselves ethically superior to the general public, and therefore see no need to engage in dialogue with them, but only to issue the messages they believe the public should adopt, the debate will have no social impact. We need research that fosters co-creation, democracy, and a plurality of voices, and that addresses the concerns and sensitivities of all citizens.
Associate Professor at University of Granada
PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the best school of education in the world
Full-Professor in Sociology of Gender Violence, University of Barcelona.
Affiliated Member of the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge.
1st with the most total citations of all categories, among those authors including in Google Scholar "Gender Violence" as one of them.