Now is key time to shape AI, benefits in vaccines, discovery, detection all decrease risk of global pandemics

The rate of AI progress is occurring at such a speed and scale that it is impossible for any one person, company, or country to predict the future of this technology, or how it will change the way we live. But we can see how AI is already reshaping technology, commerce, and geopolitics. In this inter-AI period, we have the opportunity to direct the course of the AI-enabled future. We will witness several key milestones that will give a picture of the emerging generative world order. In 2024, 41% of the world’s population will head to the polls, including the three most populous democracies, India, the United States, and Indonesia. With significant elections also occurring for the EU Parliament and in Taiwan, at the end of next year we will better understand how AI is both strengthening and undermining democratic societies. With democracies facing challenges on multiple fronts – including ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East – we will also have a better picture of how AI is changing the character of war and how liberal societies defend themselves. As former US undersecretary of defense Michele Flournoy wrote, “In the future, Americans can expect AI to change how the United States and its adversaries fight on the battlefield.” That future is coming faster than many think, including AI-enabled unmanned surface, subsurface, and aerial vehicles and “intelligent” ballistic missiles, as well as other weapons systems that can identify, track, and attack their own targets, potentially without humans in the loop. In the medium term, AI will reshape scientific discovery and reengineer globalization. AI is already enhancing scientific breakthroughs, including data-driven strategies to speed up Covid-19 vaccine research and development. AI will accelerate the scientific method across the board, and in the health-care field will provide new methods for drug discovery, disease detection, and clinical trial facilitation. Alongside the historic benefits, there could be new and more dangerous use cases, including biological and other forms of weaponry. With geopolitical competition on the rise, AI could accelerate the fragmentation between the US and Chinese technology ecosystems, and other countries may have to choose between the two competitors as they seek to protect their digital sovereignty and interests. The pervasiveness and scale of AI will mean that its effects will be felt in every part of society. Many observers worry about job loss, as AI has the potential to automate 25% of labor tasks in advanced economies and 10 – 20% in emerging economies. But those fears should be balanced with a grounding in the history of past technological revolutions and in a focus on the new opportunities that AI will unlock. On net, technological innovation drives economic progress, improves social welfare, increases workers’ wages and income, strengthens demand, and creates new jobs and industries that our ancestors could not have imagined. As economist David Autor reported, “Roughly 60% of employment in 2018 is found in job titles that did not exist in 1940.” There is no turning back the clock on AI. The most important question will be how we will live in a new technological era, when a human-like intelligence, perhaps one day an artificial general intelligence, is a part of our world. Today, we have the power to choose what that future will look like. This period will not be repeated. It’s up to human beings to choose wisely.