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Stop AI disinformation with laws & lawyers: Ian Bremmer & Maria Ressa
How do you keep guardrails on AI? “In the United States, historically, we don't respond with censorship. We respond with lawyers,” said Ian Bremmer, President and Founder of the Eurasia Group & GZERO Media, speaking in a GZERO Global Stage discussion live from the 2023 Paris Peace Forum.
Setting up basic legal structures around artificial intelligence is the first step toward building an infrastructure of accountability that can keep the technology from doing at least as much harm as good.
The European Union has an early lead in setting up systems, but Rappler CEO Maria Ressa said, “the EU is winning the race of the turtles” as the entire globe lags far behind the pace of technological advancement. Without legal structures and a healthy free press and civic society in place, democracies will struggle to remain resilient to the threats of AI-generated disinformation.
The livestream was part of the Global Stage series, produced by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft. These discussions convene heads of state, business leaders, technology experts from around the world for critical debate about the geopolitical and technology trends shaping our world.
- How are emerging technologies helping to shape democracy? ›
- Podcast: Artificial intelligence new rules: Ian Bremmer and Mustafa Suleyman explain the AI power paradox ›
- The AI power paradox: Rules for AI's power ›
- AI and data regulation in 2023 play a key role in democracy ›
- Ian Bremmer: How AI may destroy democracy ›
- Paris Peace Forum Director General Justin Vaïsse: Finding common ground - GZERO Media ›
- At the Paris Peace Forum, grassroots activists highlight urgent issues - GZERO Media ›
Should AI content be protected as free speech?
Americans love free speech, and for all its flaws, the American government does take a lighter hand than many other major democracies. But even in the US, there are limits. So where does misinformation and fabricated imagery and audio generated by AI fit into free speech?
Eléonore Caroit, vice president of the French Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, says she understands the sensitivities around taking down political speech in the US. "In the US, you have the First Amendment, which is so important that anything else could be seen as censorship,” she said, “Whereas, in France, I think we have a higher tolerance to some sort of regulation, which is not going to be seen as censorship as it would in the US.”
Caroit spoke at a GZERO Global Stage discussion with Ian Bremmer, President and Founder, Eurasia Group & GZERO Media, Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, and Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, moderated by Julien Pain, journalist and host of Franceinfo, live from the 2023 Paris Peace Forum.
Where should the line fall between free speech and censorship? If someone, say, publishes a campaign video made with AI that showed misleading images of immigrants rioting to call for hardcore migration policy, would the government be within its rights to force tech companies to remove it from their platforms? Caroit mentioned that in fact, France removed two videos from far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour made with AI, and could have struck down his entire YouTube channel if he published a third.
But to rein in out-of-control AI, which can generate mountains of text, audio, and video at the click of a mouse, countries of all persuasions on free speech — even those decidedly “anti” — will need to come to an agreement on basic rules of the road.
Watch the full livestream panel discussion: "Live from the Paris Peace Forum: Embracing technology to protect democracy"
The livestream was part of the Global Stage series, produced by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft. These discussions convene heads of state, business leaders, technology experts from around the world for critical debate about the geopolitical and technology trends shaping our world.
- Rishi Sunak's first-ever UK AI Safety Summit: What to expect ›
- How the EU designed the new iPhone ›
- Regulate AI: Sure, but how? ›
- AI and data regulation in 2023 play a key role in democracy ›
- Ian Bremmer: How AI may destroy democracy ›
- The UN takes on AI ›
- Did the US steal the UK’s AI thunder? ›
- Paris Peace Forum Director General Justin Vaïsse: Finding common ground - GZERO Media ›
- At the Paris Peace Forum, grassroots activists highlight urgent issues - GZERO Media ›
Scotland's First Minister and Scottish National Party (SNP) Leader Nicola Sturgeon.
What We’re Watching: Sturgeon's resignation, NATO-Nordic divide, India vs. BBC, Tunisia’s tightening grip
Nicola Sturgeon steps down
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced on Wednesday that she is stepping down. She’s been in the role for over eight years, having taken power after the failed 2014 independence referendum. Speaking from Edinburgh, Sturgeon said she’d been contemplating her future for weeks and knew "in my head and in my heart" it was time to go. A longtime supporter of Scottish independence, Sturgeon was pushing for a new referendum, which was rejected by the UK’s top court late last year. In recent weeks, she and her colleagues had been debating whether the next national election in 2024 should be an effective referendum on independence. Sturgeon will stay in power until a successor is elected — likely contenders include John Swinney, Sturgeon’s deputy first minister, Angus Robertson, the culture and external affairs secretary, and Kate Forbes, the finance secretary.
Turkey divides Finland and Sweden
On Tuesday, NATO and other Western officials publicly acknowledged for the first time that Finland and Sweden might join the transatlantic alliance at different times, a notable public admission that negotiations with Turkey over Sweden’s NATO accession haven’t gone well. Neither Nordic country can become an alliance member without unanimous support from all existing members, and NATO-member Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a beef with Sweden. Erdogan is angry that Sweden’s government has provided asylum for dozens of Kurdish leaders he considers terrorists, and it didn’t help when a right-wing activist burned a Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, an act Sweden’s government treated as an offensive act of free speech that’s protected by law. Erdogan may also see a political opportunity to boost his reelection chances by defying European leaders in general and Sweden in particular. (Turkey’s elections are expected in May or June.) For NATO, Finland’s membership is arguably the more urgent priority. Though Sweden monitors occasional Russian naval intrusions into its territorial waters, it’s Finland that shares an 810-mile land border with Russia. European leaders hope that, if Erdogan wins his election, a deal can be cut in the coming months to allow Sweden to join the club.
India takes aim at BBC
Indian tax officials raided the BBC’s local offices on Tuesday in what they said was a probe into the British broadcaster’s business practices. But the move comes amid a broader government campaign to censor a new BBC documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in anti-Muslim riots that killed more than 1,000 people in the state of Gujarat while he was governor in 2002. Modi has always denied stoking – or neglecting – the violence, and India’s Supreme Court has reached a similar conclusion. In the weeks since the doc aired in the UK, Modi’s government has cracked down swiftly in India, blocking it from being viewed online in the country, halting screenings at Indian universities, and forcing both Twitter and YouTube to remove it locally. Modi has often used internet laws to muzzle criticism, and tax officials have searched critical media outlets before. Last year the subcontinent slipped eight points to 150 out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. How will the UK government respond?
Tunisia crackdown intensifies
Robocop is not messing around now. Tunisian President Kais Saied, whose monotone style earned him that nickname, has unleashed a ferocious crackdown on his critics and opponents in recent days. On Tuesday, sweeping arrests ensnared the leader of Ennahda, an opposition Islamist movement that once held power in the country. Saied, a constitutional lawyer who was elected as an outsider candidate in 2019, has led a massive overhaul of Tunisia’s government, diminishing the power of the legislature and the courts. He says he’s trying to make government more decisive and efficient in the only country that emerged from the Arab Spring with a democracy. His critics say he is plunging the country of 12 million right back into an authoritarian winter. See our full profile of Saied here.
A view shows Batman logo on a box of cocaine, said to be recovered by New Zealand Police.
Hard Numbers: Batman found on cocaine, Disney censors Simpsons, Nicaragua jails priests, Bard flub costs Google billions
3.2: In a possible indication that the Marvel universe is winning, Batman is now on cocaine. New Zealand’s navyintercepted a haul of 3.2 tons of the drug floating in the pacific. Many of the packets were labeled with the Dark Knight’s symbol, evidently a trademark of certain producers in South America.
1: Disney hasremoved one single episode of the current Simpsons season from its streaming service in Hong Kong. They haven’t commented on why, but the episode features a scene where Marge Simpson’s online spin instructor stands before a background that advertises “the wonders of China: Bitcoin mines, forced labor camps where children make smartphones!”
5: A Nicaraguan courthas sentenced five priests to decade-long prison terms for supporting pro-democracy protests in 2018 that the government of strongman Daniel Ortega deemed illegal. Since those protests, Ortega has cracked down severely on civil society, with a particular focus on his one-time allies in the Catholic Church.
100 billion: Google’s parent company Alphabetlost more than $100 billion in value on Wednesday after Bard, its newly unveiled AI-powered chatbot, incorrectly attributed the origin of certain deep space photographs in an advertisement. That weird sound you hear right now is rival AI bot ChatGPT, somewhere deep in the metaverse, laughing its neural networks off.
Hard Numbers: Zero-COVID censorship, Russian default, NATO’s rapid reaction, Indian political shenanigans
5:Zero-COVID in China until 2027? A senior Communist Party official, in a notice published on Monday, said the policy would remain in place for the next five years. He probably didn’t run his statement by Xi Jinping, since Chinese censors immediately scrubbed it from news sites and social media.
100 million: About $100 million worth of interest on Russian government bonds was unpaid after the grace expired on Sunday night, marking the first technical default on its sovereign debt since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918. Still, the effect on the economy will be limited by the reality that Western sanctions have already made it extremely hard for Russia to borrow money anyway.
300,000: NATO plans to beef up its high-readiness forces to over 300,000 troops to counter big threats like Russia. The alliance’s leaders are gathering this week in Madrid for their first summit since the war in Ukraine began.
40: Maharashtra — India's richest state and home to Mumbai — is now effectively run by ... no one. Most of the cabinet is now in a hotel thousands of miles away in Assam state, talking to 40 rebel lawmakers from the “ruling” Shiv Shena party holed up there to demand the chief minister step down. They're rumored to be seeking to jump ship and form an alliance with their Hindu nationalist pals from PM Narendra Modi's BJP party.A Russian law enforcement officer during an unsanctioned protest against the special military operation in Ukraine in St. Petersburg.
Hard Numbers: Russian censorship, wheat prices soar, Chinese growth target, criminal Indian pols, Tanzanian democracy
15: Referring to the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine as an “invasion” or a “war” could put Russians behind bars for up to 15 years, as stipulated in a new law against spreading “fake news.” To play it safe, stick to “special military operation.” (And don’t miss our very own Alex Kliment’s Twitter video take.)
55: Global wheat prices are up a whopping 55% since Russia invaded Ukraine. If the war continues, countries that depend on cheap Russian & Ukrainian wheat imports like Egypt or Lebanon could suffer tremendously.
5.5: China set on Saturday a 5.5% economic growth target for this year, the lowest figure since 1991. Still, it’s an ambitious goal given domestic challenges like zero COVID and the economic fallout of Xi Jinping’s “common prosperity” policy, not to mention global uncertainty over the war in Ukraine.
25: Up to 25% of candidates running for MP in ongoing elections in five Indian states have criminal cases filed against them. Although this phenomenon is not new in the world’s largest democracy, experts say criminal politicians have become more powerful in recent years, especially in poor communities with weak public and justice services.
266: Tanzanian opposition leader Freeman Mbowe was released on Saturday after spending 266 days in jail on terrorism charges. This suggests President Samia Hassan — who took office almost a year ago after the death of the authoritarian John Magufuli — is ready to reconcile with the opposition in the East African nation.
Florida law would fine social media companies for censoring politicians
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:
What is the deal with the new Florida law that fines social media companies for censoring politicians?
Well, it's a deal of Floridian politics, it is informed by Republican anger about the banning of President Trump off of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. But the last word has not been said about the new law. Challenges based on companies' first amendment rights, as well as compatibility with current intermediary liability exemptions, like Section 230, will probably be fought out in court.
Will the law help or hurt the spread of misinformation on social media?
Now clearly, not only politicians like Trump have been guilty of sharing dis and misinformation, others have, too. So one law, in one state, will unlikely solve that vast and also complicated problem.
'Monster Hunter' movie pulled in China after race row
A brief line of dialogue was targeted by Chinese social media users as racist.