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The World Economic Forum Calls For AI And โ€œDeepfakeโ€ Regulation, Has Already Partnered With UK Government

The WEF says it wants to reduce "harm."

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The World Economic Forum (WEF) is unsurprisingly a part of the โ€œdeepfakes panicโ€ that has been spread and promoted for some years now by a number of politicians and media outlets around the world.

The notion of deepfake tech is used here as a stand-in for (future) AI in general โ€“ and least as far as WEFโ€™s โ€œfearsโ€ go, behind them is an attempt to make sure that governments and regulators around the world get working to prevent โ€œharmโ€ from AI.

According to WEF, cyber-criminals are using deepfakes so much these days that the problem has become โ€œworryingโ€ โ€“ while when it comes to the news industry, this is โ€œa growing global concern.โ€

The truth is that when speaking about technology, we have seen a huge increase in โ€œeverythingโ€ over the past years: of profits, the number of users of social platforms, the censorship, the surveillance. However, the WEF chooses to look at deepfakes in isolation, mentioning a rapid increase in the amount of this content, and forecasts that say this trend will continue.

And while deepfakes have been around for a long time in order to help businesses โ€“ particularly the entertainment industry, now, WEF, an informal group representing global elites speaks about them as โ€œa threat to businessesโ€ โ€“ and if trust in digital technology needed any more eroding, WEF seems certain it will happen thanks to deepfakes.

Then thereโ€™s inevitably the conjecture that they could easily pose a threat to society at an alarming level โ€“ compromising everything from elections to national security.

WEFโ€™s solution? Letโ€™s have WEF lead the way in defining the foundations of regulating AI in an โ€œethicalโ€ way. To this end โ€“ and also making sure the development of AI is โ€œinclusive, transparent, and used safely and responsiblyโ€ โ€“ the Switzerland-based group has come up with a โ€œtoolkit for human resources.โ€

โ€œBy developing AI standards for children, the Forum is creating actionable guidelines to educate, empower and protect children and youth,โ€ a post on WEFโ€™s site says.

Next, they also want to be at the center of how companies and the healthcare sector handle AI use and development.

โ€œIn partnership with the UK government, the Forum created a set of procurement recommendations designed to unlock public-sector adoption of responsible AI,โ€ the blog post continues.

So far, more than 100 companies, governments, civil society and academic organizations have joined WEFโ€™s Global AI Action Alliance. โ€œJoy to the worldโ€ โ€“ critics might scoff sarcastically.

But WEF promises to โ€œaccelerate the adoption of responsible AI in the global public interest.โ€

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