The World Economic Forum (WEF) has listed AI-generated misinformation/disinformation and cyberattacks as some of the top risks that countries globally will face this year.
The Forum disclosed this in its Global Risks Report 2024 just released. According to WEF, “Global risk” is defined as the possibility of the occurrence of an event or condition which, if it occurs, would negatively impact a significant proportion of global GDP, population, or natural resources.
The report, which details the findings of the Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS), revealed that the advancement in AI technology now makes it easy for people to create and spread misinformation.
According to the report, 53% of the respondents saw AI misinformation as the biggest global risk in 2024, bringing it to number 2 out of the top 10 risks for this year, after extreme weather, which topped the risks table.
Cyberattacks occupied the 5th position on the global risks of 2024 with 39% seeing it as a major risk. WEF noted cyberattacks remain major concerns in the outlook overall and appear as a top-three concern for government and private-sector respondents.
Threat of AI models
WEF noted that purveyors of misinformation and disinformation no longer require skill or expertise as AI models have made that simple.
- “No longer requiring a niche skill set, easy-to-use interfaces to large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) models have already enabled an explosion in falsified information and so-called ‘synthetic’ content, from sophisticated voice cloning to counterfeit websites,” it said.
To combat the growing risks, WEF said governments are beginning to roll out new and evolving regulations to target both hosts and creators of online disinformation and illegal content.
- “Nascent regulation of generative AI will likely complement these efforts. For example, requirements in China to watermark AI-generated content may help identify false information, including unintentional misinformation through AI-hallucinated content.
- “Generally, however, the speed and effectiveness of regulation is unlikely to match the pace of development,” it added.
Digital gap
WEF further reveals that the convergence of technological advances and geopolitical dynamics will likely create a new set of winners and losers across advanced and developing economies alike If commercial incentives and geopolitical imperatives, rather than public interest, remain the primary drivers of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and other frontier technologies.
Thus, the digital gap between high- and low-income countries will drive a stark disparity in the distribution of related benefits – and risks.
- “Vulnerable countries and communities would be left further behind, digitally isolated from turbocharged AI breakthroughs impacting economic productivity, finance, climate, education and healthcare, as well as related job creation,” WEF said.
