There’s a sentence in today’s reporting of Artificial Realities which captures perfectly why we have chosen to focus on it. Patricia Tumelty, CEO of Mind Jersey, says:
“Drawing the line between the real and the unreal is no longer confined to philosophy, it has become a practical day-to-day concern for many, and impacts everyone.”
Artificial Intelligence is clearly a technology which is rapidly, and fundamentally, changing how we live our lives, and as such, its implications cannot be constrained by geography. How we interact with it is a topic for debate at an international level, often transcending decisions – or legislation – which operate more locally.
But that doesn’t mean Jersey shouldn’t have a view, particularly when it comes to protecting young people from online risks, which is the subject of an imminent review by the Children, Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel.
That is just one aspect of AI, but it is an important one, and hence it is the focus of the JEP’s three-part study of how fake realities are now being accessed every day, and some of the very serious risks they pose, such as deep-fake pornography.
What Jersey could, or should be doing about it, is a subject for the Panel to consider, and their conclusions on that will be very interesting.
But more broadly, the point which Patricia Tumelty is making is that any legislation aside, this is really a societal issue, and perhaps one we all need to take responsibility for, rather than looking to the government for a resolution on a topic over which they can probably exert very little control.
We will get what we each accept, so if individually we are happy to use AI ourselves to produce scam pictures or video, or to construct fake relationships, then we can hardly complain when the practice becomes (even more) widespread, and proliferates in areas which cause real harm.
We will need to consider as a society what is acceptable, and what isn’t. Our short series is intended to contribute to exactly that debate, as will the findings of the Scrutiny Panel review when they are published in the coming days.
These are topics which will shape all our lives for the foreseeable future, and on which we all need to form a view. What’s real, and what isn’t, is no longer an esoteric, philosophical debate of primarily intellectual interest – it is an immediate and visceral issue which we will increasingly face every day.
