The AI détente

THE WORLD MUST FIGURE OUT A WAY TO DEAL WITH THE THREAT FROM AI

- JAN BREMMER

THE NOW SURGING DEVELOPMENT OF artificial intelligence will produce medical breakthroughs that save and enhance billions of lives. It will become the most powerful engine for prosperity in history. It will give untold numbers of people, including generations not yet born, powerful tools their ancestors never imagined. But the risks and challenges AI will pose are becoming clear too, and now is the time to understand and address them. Here are the biggest.

The health of democracy and free markets depends on access to accurate and verifiable information. In recent years, social media has made it tougher to tell fact from fiction, but advances in artificial intelligence will unleash legions of bots that seem far more human than those we've encountered to date. In China, and later in its client states, AI will take facial recognition and other tools that can be used for state surveillance to exponentially higher levels of sophistication.