{"id":231030,"date":"2024-05-16T14:54:29","date_gmt":"2024-05-16T14:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/?p=231030"},"modified":"2024-05-16T14:54:29","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T14:54:29","slug":"human-rights-lawyer-susie-alegre-if-ai-is-so-complex-it-cant-be-explained-there-are-areas-where","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dominiclevent.com\/blog\/human-rights-lawyer-susie-alegre-if-ai-is-so-complex-it-cant-be-explained-there-are-areas-where\/","title":{"rendered":"Human rights lawyer Susie Alegre: \u2018If AI is so complex it can\u2019t be explained, there are areas where …"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Susie Alegre<\/a> is an international human rights lawyer and author, originally from the Isle of Man, whose focus in recent years has been on technology and its impact on human rights. As a legal expert she has advised Amnesty International, the UN and other organisations on issues such as counter-terrorism and anti-corruption. Her first book, Freedom to Think<\/a><\/em>, published in 2022 and shortlisted for the Christopher Bland prize<\/a>, looked at the history of legal freedoms around thought. In her new book Human Rights, Robot Wrongs<\/em>, she turns her attention to the ways in which AI threatens our rights in areas such as war, sex and creativity \u2013 and what we might do to fight back.<\/p>\n

What prompted you to write this book?
\n<\/strong>There were two triggers. One was the sudden explosion of ChatGPT and the narrative about how everyone can be a novelist now and there\u2019s going to be no need for human creators, because AI will be able to do it all for us. It felt utterly depressing. The second was the story about a Belgian man who took his own life after a six-week intensive relationship with an AI chatbot<\/a>. His widow felt that, without this relationship, which distorted his worldview, he would have still been there for her and for his children. That triggered me to think \u2013 well, this is absolutely about the right to life; to family life, to freedom of thought and freedom from manipulation. And how are<\/em> we thinking about AI and the really severe ways that it\u2019s impacting our human rights?<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t give much credence to the threat of an AI apocalypse.
\n<\/strong>I think that\u2019s a distraction. What we need to be worried about is putting limits on how AI can be developed, sold and used by people. And ultimately, there are people behind the technology, in the design phase and particularly in the marketing, and also in the choices that are being made about how it\u2019s used.<\/p>\n

Everything we\u2019re hearing about AI suggests that it\u2019s advancing at incredible speed, <\/strong>and that the models operate at levels of complexity that even their creators can\u2019t grasp. How can regulators ever hope to keep up?
\n<\/strong>I think there\u2019s an awful lot of smoke and mirrors. It\u2019s like in The Wizard of Oz<\/em>, when Toto pulls back the curtain and we see what\u2019s going on behind. So we don\u2019t need to believe that it\u2019s all inevitable and omnipotent. We can still make choices and ask questions. Also, if something is so complex that it can\u2019t be explained, then there are certain areas where it shouldn\u2019t be used.<\/p>\n