World Economic Forum Praises Dictators and Touts Dangerous AI

June 30th, 2023 5:10 PM

The World Economic Forum’s summer conference closed, but its dystopian artificial intelligence (AI) plans for the future continue. And those AI plans ignore the inherent risks and threats of the technology.

AI supposedly has “the potential for very, very significant economic development,” according to the moderator of a WEF panel. The WEF’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions (AMNC) summer conference took place this week, 27-29 June, in Tianjin, China, despite the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) gambit to turn AI into a “socialist” tool. One panel, titled “Keeping Up: AI Readiness Amid an AI Revolution,” featured panelists fawning over the supposed wonders of government-mandated AI in healthcare and other AI applications.

 “How to [access] the healthcare services equally?” Chinese Neusoft Corporation Chairman Liu Jiren asked. His solution? AI. “We digitalize all [of] the clinical pathway,” he explained. The proposal, however, ignores the warnings by multiple experts about AI’s dangers for job loss and even the possible “extinction” of humans. The proposal, and panelists’ praise for AI, also ignores evidence of AI’s biased programming—including denial of basic biology. Several panelists also praised anti-free speech governmental and global entities for their potential to influence and regulate AI.

WEF’s support for tyrannical government enforcing AI use became clear in this panel. “China is good because most hospitals are owned by [the] government,” Liu laughed. Thus, the government can force hospitals to adopt AI, he said. MRC Free Speech America previously highlighted the dangerous nature of the Chinese Communist Party’s plans to exploit AI. But panel moderator and University of California Berkeley Business professor Olaf Groth  agreed with Liu, “Yes, it starts with the government mandates.” 

Speaking on government mandates, Groth sighed, “Not everybody is as advanced as Rwanda or China on this matter…it’s a shining example, Rwanda is.” Quite telling for Groth to celebrate brutal dictatorships for their supposed “advanced” position in AI. Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame and CCP dictator Xi Jinping and their administrations are not “shining” examples. “[How] do you, Liu, institute trust in that eco-system?” Groth pressed, returning to the pro-CCP panelist. “What do you do to get doctors to play along?” Yet he himself later confessed of AI, “Frankly, there are so many things we just don’t know yet.” 

Multiple panelists touted the European Union’s efforts to regulate AI, despite the EU’s previous anti-free speech legislation (such as proposals to censor supposed “disinformation”). Hertie School Professor of Ethics and Technology Joanna Bryson explicitly promoted the United Nations’ UNESCO and WEF as potential AI-controlling entities during the panel, saying “we need innovation at” the “transnational” level, even though both the UN and WEF are openly pro-censorship.

During the pandemic, the U.S. government pressured tech platforms to engage in censorship of COVID-19 narratives, some of which turned out to be true. In fact, MRC Free Speech America found over 800 cases of COVID-19 censorship in February 2022. The world needs less government-tech collusion, not more.

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