‘We unleashed the beast’ – the world’s hopes about AI

The threat of catastrophic danger as artificial intelligence develops at high speed has sparked a global debate on how it should be regulated.

AFP spoke to people in different countries about their fears and hopes for the AI future, as leading US labs call for a coordinated slowdown of their cutting-edge work on the technology.

Italy: ‘Privately, it scares me’ –

Beside ancient buildings in central Rome, 43-year-old architect Frida Awrohum said she tries to use AI tools in her professional life because they offer fresh ideas.

“But privately it still scares me,” she confided, adding she prioritises the “human” aspect of her work.

Diego Sermattei, 18, said AI can be very helpful for students like himself, because “you just have to look something up and it finds it for you right away”.

– Indonesia: ‘Could any human respond better?’ –

“Sometimes when I share my personal life with AI, I think, would there be any human who could respond to me as well as AI does?” said 18-year-old student Astrid Anindya.

Anindya uses several chatbots to find information — and to help her use effective wording when applying for jobs.

“Sometimes they give wrong information. So, usually I do a crosscheck, from ChatGPT to Gemini,” she said, referring respectively to OpenAI’s and Google’s flagship products.

– United States: ‘Unleashed the beast’ –

“AI is here. We unleashed the beast,” said Maliyka Muhammad, a 46-year-old analyst for New York State, who thinks “a consortium of people” would be best to regulate it.

San Francisco software engineer Lucy Pen, 30, has already seen her job shift from writing code herself to having AI agents write it for her too.