How Can Multilateralism Survive the Era of Artificial Intelligence?

• Author: Pauwels, Eleonore

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is converging with an extraordinary array of other technologies, from biotech and genomics, to neurotechnology, robotics, cybertechnology and manufacturing systems. Increasingly, these technologies are decentralized, beyond State control, and available to a wide range of actors around the world. While these trends may unlock enormous potential for humankind, the convergence of AI and new technologies also poses unprecedented risks to global security. In particular, they create challenges for the multilateral system and the United Nations, which operate at the inter-State level.

With its potential to enable real-time, cost-effective and efficient responses to a variety of human development and security-related issues, AI has a significant role to play in managing complex risks to vulnerable populations, averting outbreaks of crisis, and building resilience against shocks within our societies. While AI, in convergence with other technologies, cuts across all pillars of the work of the United Nations, its role will be crucial in the prevention agenda.

Yet, as a dual-use technology, AI is as likely to disempower populations as it is to empower them. The ability of AI to intrude upon--and potentially control--private human behaviour has direct implications for the prevention and human rights agenda of the United Nations. New forms of social and biological control could, in fact, require a reimagining of the framework currently in place to monitor and implement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Evolving security risks will certainly require the multilateral system to anticipate and better understand the rapidly emerging field of AI convergence.

Therefore, within the prevention agenda and its intersection with new technologies, it is necessary to use inclusive foresight and normative guidance, based on a renewed interest in the Charter of the United Nations, to shape the creation, deployment and governance of AI systems.

THE PROMISES OF AI CONVERGENCE

We have entered an era of technological convergence that seeks to merge our physical, digital and biological lives. Computer scientists are developing deep learning algorithms that can recognize patterns within massive amounts of data with superhuman efficiency and, increasingly, without supervision. At the same time, geneticists and neuroscientists are deciphering data related to our genomes and brain functioning, learning about human health, well-being and cognition.

The result? Functional capabilities for averting crises that were previously unimaginable are now real, upgrading efforts from precision medicine and food security to conflict prevention. For example, deep learning algorithms are diagnosing retinopathy (1) in patients living in rural India where there is a shortage of ophthalmologists. The same algorithms can identify malign biomarkers among large swaths of genomics data from human populations to design blood-tests for various cancers. (2) Companies like Zipline (3) are using AI technology in autonomous drones to deliver critical medical supplies, such as vaccines, to rural hospitals in Africa.

AI could also become a powerful tool for the international development efforts of the United Nations. In collaboration with the Organization and other global partners, the World Bank is building a Famine Action Mechanism, (4) which relies on deep learning systems developed by Microsoft, Google and Amazon, to detect when food crises are about to turn into famines. The same tool allows agile financing to be connected directly with sources of food insecurity. UN Global Pulse is spearheading an initiative (5) that uses machine learning to monitor the effects of extremist violence on hateful speech online.

The combined optimization of biometrics, genomics, and behavioural data is giving rise to "affective computing"...