(W.E. Talk) Fausto Giunchiglia: How to Embrace the Ongoing Development of AI?(3)

CNS: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt described DeepSeek's rise as "a turning point" in the global AI race. In your opinion, what is the ideal relationship between competition and cooperation in the AI sector?

Fausto Giunchiglia: AI is going to change how we think, the nature itself of knowledge and reasoning. This might become a unique opportunity for a huge jump in human civilization. Think about how much our quality of life would improve if each and every person in the world, given a need, could ask for help to the most qualified person in the world for that need. But to achieve this goal we need to go beyond the current trend where a single actor, most often for profit, proposes global solutions for problems. 

Achieving the goal above requires operating at two levels. At a first cooperation level, we need to set up the foundational ethical, legal, sociological, organizational and technological data infrastructure which will allow different cultures to understand one another and to share data and models. At a second level, locally, the different economies will produce their GenAI and data driven products and services. In turn, these will be distributed competitively worldwide thanks to the above, cooperatively built, infrastructure. 

The net result will be a much more knowledgeable and data-aware society where each culture will be enriched by the interaction with the others while preserving its own identity. GenAI would give us the possibility of building a more inclusive and sustainable society, this being the result of all of us knowing better and appreciating the similarities and diversities with the others. 

CNS: AI Action Summit closed in France on February 11. Altogether 60 countries and international organizations signed a statement which states that priorities include "ensuring AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy". For you, are these the challenges for the future development of AI? For common people who don't do the professional research in AI, what attitude and actions should be taken to embrace the ongoing development of AI? 

Fausto Giunchiglia: These are clearly the core challenges. The ones which everybody should agree upon. I can only see a few motivations why one might not agree. The first relates to being shortsighted and the second to the belief of having a competitive advantage which can be maintained in time. This way of thinking, I am totally convinced, will lead to a failure. But agreeing on the general principles is not good enough. The above statement and vision must be translated in an operational plan and then in concrete actions.

AI is about growing our own knowledge and understanding about life and how to act in the world. It is about using the knowledge of other people. Ultimately, it is about collectively sharing our knowledge. It would empower us, as human kind, beyond our biggest limitation, that is, our extremely limited knowledge of the world around us. For now, it is hard now to see an upper limit in how far we can get in this process, in a positive but also in a negative way.