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

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

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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.

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– Italy: ‘Privately, it scares me’ –

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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.

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

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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”.

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

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“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.

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

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“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.

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– United States: ‘Unleashed the beast’ –

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“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.

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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.

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“Maybe in the future they don’t need me to give commands to AI anymore,” she said.

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Brian Diaz, a 26-year-old nurse in New York, said that “humanity has to develop”, even though in the wrong hands AI could cause harm.

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“You’re either gonna be with it or you’re gonna get left (behind),” Diaz said.

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– China: ‘Real hardship’ –

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On the streets of Shanghai, 42-year-old Xie Zongbo said “no new technology develops completely smoothly”.

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“We will slowly learn to minimise its negative impacts, so its positive aspects can better serve humanity and offer greater convenience,” he said.

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Jenny, a 50-year-old pharmaceutical worker who declined to give her surname, said that “businesses cannot possibly regulate themselves”.

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Instead they must be restrained through policies and laws, she said.

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Businessman Yang Shuai, 42, feared that future generations would “face real hardship” due to hurdles encountered when searching for jobs.

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– Chile: ‘Making us dumber’ –

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Advertising student Catalina Cruz, 19, thinks AI is “making us dumber” because “people aren’t able to think for themselves any more”.

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“There’s also the environmental issue, because it uses too much water,” she said, saying the technology “definitely needs to be regulated”.

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But Constanza Medel, a 29-year-old occupational therapist, sees AI “as a clear benefit as long as you take the proper precautions”.

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– France: ‘Letting things happen’ –

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Train driver-in-training Romain Hamel, 34, said in Paris that AI was developing so quickly that “we don’t have enough perspective yet”.

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“We’re not putting enough barriers in place at the moment — we’re letting things happen,” with the race driven by the United States and China.

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“I don’t want to say there’s not enough regulation, because in Europe we regulate a lot, and I think more frameworks should be introduced to prevent abuse, or us losing control over it.”

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– Israel: ‘Can finish us’ –

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“Like the internet, each country has its own authority, but we still need something global,” said software engineer Tal Reinfeld.

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Video creator Yotam Katzor, 32, worried about what would happen when humans were no longer the smartest thing on Earth.

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“If it wants, it can finish us. But we still have the power to win” through regulation, he said.

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– Japan: ‘AI doesn’t have emotions’ –

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Atsukuni Tabata, 56, who works at an advertising company, said it was “scary” not knowing what AI would do as it “accumulates more and more data”.

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But part-time service industry worker Konno Hazuki, 29, does not feel she is “about to be replaced by AI”.

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“Because AI doesn’t have emotions, there are things it just can’t offer customers,” Hazuki said.

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