The meteoric growth in global adoption of artificial intelligence comes with a paradox: although this technology has sparked immense optimism about its potential to positively transform entire swathes of society, AI has also triggered the alarm bell about the damage caused to trust and governance.

Even a top executive at Microsoft Corp., who has as much invested in AI like any business today, it recognized its concerns about what this next wave of industrial transformation might bring.

“Part of our job as a community is to build an AI governance machine,” the Microsoft president said. Brad Smithsaid during a presentation at Web Summit in Lisbon on Tuesday. “We must build an industrial revolution that is sensitive to the needs of the planet. »

Paradigm Shift for UI

The contrast between AI’s impact on business innovation and efficiency and its potential societal cost was one of the clear themes emerging from this year’s Web Summit, which attracted more than 70,000 participants over three days in the capital of Portugal. Sessions highlighted the impact of AI on cloud industries, robotics and the fundamental ways users interact with technology.

One of the participating companies, Qualcomm Inc., is at the forefront of the AI ​​wave, designing chip systems to harness increasingly powerful central processing units and graphics processing units to train large language models. The company Snapdragon Elite 8 AI Engine powers the CPU and GPU as well as a neural processing unit to launch AI workloads.

Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm, spoke about AI this week at the Web Summit in Lisbon.

During his presentation at the Web Summit, the CEO of Qualcomm Cristiano Amon characterized generative AI as the new user interface, explaining that AI’s natural language capability has removed the wall between human and machine.

“The AI ​​generation is the new user interface, now humans can talk to the computer using human language,” Amon said at the Web Summit gathering this week. “This is a new paradigm shift that creates a whole new opportunity to create value. Applications will evolve towards a type of experience focused above all on humans.

Models accelerate robotics development

Ironically, AI’s ability to create a human-centered experience is also giving a boost to the field of robotics. Thomas Wolfco-founder and chief scientist of popular open source AI model repository Hugging Face Inc., noted that robotics is poised for further growth in the coming months, fueled by the rise of small models of language.

“Robotics needs low latency, and we are looking at smaller models within this framework,” Wolf explained. “It’s simply a question of size and speed of calculation. AI will be integrated everywhere.

An example of how smaller models have transformed robotics was provided Wednesday by Peggy JohnsonCEO of Agility Robotics Inc. She was accompanied during her appearance by Figurethe company’s humanoid robot, which sorted laundry on stage in response to verbal commands. Agility’s robot features real-world use cases for different workflows and is capable of performing one task in the morning and another in the afternoon.

Digit is programmed to flash hearts in his eyes when asked to express his love for something, but Johnson discovered one instance where Digit responded to the prompt by arranging objects on a table in front of him at the image of a heart. Agility uses a variety of AI models to train its robot, and the change depended on which model it was trained on. “Different AI models will react differently,” Johnson said.

The platforms needed to train AI models are also undergoing a competitive transformation. Although hyperscalers such as Google LLC, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services Inc. have captured a healthy part In the AI ​​compute market, cloud operator CoreWeave Inc. has positioned itself as an optimized alternative for AI workloads.

On Wednesday, the company announcement that it had closed a $650 million secondary funding round, joined by Cisco Investments and Pure Storage Inc., as well as several financial institutions. CoreWeave operates data centers powered by AI clusters of up to tens of thousands of Nvidia Corp. GPUs.

“Traditional cloud built the minivan,” CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said Wednesday during an appearance on the Web Summit main stage. “But when you’re building AI infrastructure and serving labs and businesses built around AI, they have a specific use case. They want to access computing in the most efficient way possible. Our opportunity to compete with hyperscalers lies in providing an entirely different product.

In search of transparency on social networks

While the tech industry has focused on building AI infrastructure and advancing model applications, it is also facing the consequences of what rapid innovation can bring.

AI’s strong language training allows it to understand human conversations. This has proven to be a powerful tool on social media platforms, where algorithms can amplify specific messages aimed at targeted audiences.

Independent research organization NewsGuard has identified more than 1,100 AI-generated media, spanning 16 languages, including English, and operating virtually without human oversight. NewsGuard also recently reported that fake news sites now outnumber real newspaper sites in the United States

This puts direct focus on social media companies providing a strong platform to spread misleading information, according to Jan Rézabfounder and CEO of Ravineo, a digital media company that spear Tuesday. Rezab, an angel investor who previously ran analytics firm Socialbakers, encourages social media platforms to open their news algorithms to inspection in order to prevent the manipulation of public opinion by completely fictitious organizations.

“News algorithms should be completely transparent,” Rezab said in an interview with SiliconANGLE. “It is the most dangerous weapon ever given to society.”

Negative impact on the Web and human rights

Concerns about AI’s influence in online news and social media are also shared by mainstream media executives such as the CEO of The Atlantic. Nicholas Thompson. In May, his 167 years old publication announced a commercial partnership with OpenAI, an agreement described in an Atlantic story title “A Devil’s Deal with OpenAI”.

Speaking at a Web Summit session, Thompson expressed his belief that the realities of the information industry required the adoption of new technologies to remain relevant and competitive, while being wary of the growing influence of the AI in content publishing. “The scenario that worries me the most is that AI turns the web into garbage,” Thompson said.

Media publishers are not the only ones expressing concerns about the future impact of AI. Michael O’FlahertyCommissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, raised the possibility that the widespread adoption of AI could affect the human rights commitments made by the countries of his organization.

“It’s dangerous too, it’s a tricky thing,” O’Flaherty said. “We need safeguards. It’s about prevention, not chasing after everything that hasn’t worked. It’s about protecting the dignity of every human being, and we need to make sure AI achieves this. »

The future impact of a new government in the United States next year was the focus of discussions at this week’s Web Summit. A number of speakers were cautiously optimistic that the new Trump administration would be friendly to both business in general and the technology sector in particular.

However, the American actor Richard Schiffwho received an Emmy Award for his role in “The West Wing,” a television series about day-to-day operations in a fictional White House, wasn’t so sure. Schiff expressed concern about Tesla, X and SpaceX leader’s influence Elon Muskbecame a prominent figure in the president-elect’s administration.

“The most important technology person in the world has now become the shadow vice president,” Schiff said.

Photos: Mark Albertson/SiliconANGLE