Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to boost democracy and community rather than doomscrolling, Taiwanese programmer and cyberambassador Audrey Tang (唐鳳) said on Tuesday as she prepared to receive an award in Stockholm.
“I believe we can steer AI away from addictive intelligence that lures people in ... into assistive intelligence, where AI systems are steered by the community in service of communities,” Tang said.
A self-taught programmer who left school at 14 and pursued a career in Silicon Valley before briefly becoming minister of digital affairs, Tang spoke hours before receiving the Right Livelihood award, also known as the “alternative Nobel.”
Photo: CNA
She was awarded the prize for “advancing the social use of digital technology to empower citizens, renew democracy and heal divides,” the jury said in a statement in October.
Tang said she was convinced that humans would remain “the superintelligence,” but she said humans must work to ensure they steer AI by using it to empower communities instead of big business.
She cited Taiwan’s bid to develop AI to communicate between different populations in the nation, divided by language and culture.
“Instead of training one sovereign model that unified all these ideas, we have the civic AI trained by each language community, each cultural community,” she said.
The different AIs can then communicate with one another, she said, bringing together diverse groups for a common civic cause.
She gave the example of groups advocating for climate justice and for “creation care” — caring for the environment as seen through a religious lens, as God’s creation.
AI “can translate the climate justice work to the Biblical community, so they also see them as doing God’s work,” she said.
That could boost more than simply the environment, she added.
“We really do need to counter the narrative that democracy only leads to polarization and chaos, and never delivers, because that is the overarching narrative of authoritarianism,” Tang said.
That is especially key in a place such as Taiwan, which is the “top target” for disinformation and polarization, with about 2 million attempted cyberattacks a day, many originating from China, she said.
The Right Livelihood award was established in 1980 after the foundation behind the Nobel Prizes refused to create new honors in the fields of environment and international development.
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