IGF 2023 Day 0 Event #194 Bottom-up AI and the right to be humanly imperfect

Will AI replace us? Are societies ready to embrace the good of AI while minimising the bad? These are just some of the questions that come up often in discussions on AI. While acknowledging the importance of such debates, we want to take the conversation a few steps forward. So we will provoke participants to explore the interplay between AI, society, and humanity from a different angle: 1. Why is bottom-up AI critical for human freedom and prosperity? 2. In this era of fast technological progress, can we preserve the right to be humanly imperfect? Whenever we interact with AI platforms, we share glimpses of our thoughts and emotions. A new AI economy is emerging around collecting, codifying, and monetising our patterns of thinking and feeling. This also leads to new business models and monopolies. But we, humans, have ‘owned’ our thinking patterns since time immemorial; so we should also own those generated through AI. One way to ensure this is through the development of bottom-up AI, which is both technically possible and ethically desirable. Otherwise, we risk a sort of ‘knowledge slavery’ where citizens’ access to knowledge (including their own) is entirely controlled by corporate and/or government AI monopolies. Bottom-up AI is a way to return AI and technology to citizens and communities and reduce major societal risks. And there’s more to it: The fast development of AI has made us think that we need to compete with machines. But optimisation and perfection are goals better suited for machines, while our imperfections are part of what makes us human. As we cannot win against sci-tech optimisation, we should reclaim our right to be humanly imperfect. And ensure that human beings remain the point of reference for the development and use of AI.

First and foremost, we invite IGF participants to join us for a somewhat different type of session. Let’s call it ‘Bottom-up discussions about bottom-up AI’. Everyone willing to do so will have a chance to speak, onsite and online; we will only have two moderators who will set the scene and guide the discussions. No speakers, no panellists, no prepared statements. The session will rely on two moderators who will – throughout the entire session – pay equal attention to onsite and online participants. Online participants will be constantly encouraged to contribute their views, both by voice and by text chat. An additional experienced online moderator will engage with participants in the chat and ensure that the discussions happening there are integrated into the overall session. Moreover, onsite participants will be encouraged to log into the online participation platform and interact with the online participants as well.