False and misleading information supercharged with cutting-edge artificial intelligence that and polarize society is the top immediate risk to the global economy, the World Economic Forum said in a report Wednesday.
In its latest Global Risks Report, the organization also said an array of environmental risks pose the biggest threats in the longer term. The report was released ahead of the annual elite gathering of CEOs and world leaders in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos and is based on a survey of nearly 1,500 experts, industry leaders and policymakers.
The report listed misinformation and over the next two years, highlighting how rapid advances in technology also are creating new problems or making existing ones worse.
The authors worry that the boom in generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT means that creating sophisticated groups of people won鈥檛 be limited any longer to those with specialized skills.
AI is set to be a hot topic next week at , which are expected to be attended by tech company bosses including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and AI industry players like Meta鈥檚 chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun.
AI-powered misinformation and disinformation is emerging as a risk just as a billions of people in a slew of countries, including large economies like the United States, Britain, Indonesia, India, Mexico, and Pakistan, are this year and next, the report said.
鈥淵ou can leverage AI to do deepfakes and to really impact large groups, which really drives misinformation,鈥� said Carolina Klint, a risk management leader at Marsh, whose parent company Marsh McLennan co-authored the report with Zurich Insurance Group.
鈥淪ocieties could become further polarized鈥� as people find it harder to verify facts, she said. Fake information also could be used to fuel questions about the legitimacy of elected governments, 鈥渨hich means that democratic processes could be eroded, and it would also drive societal polarization even further,鈥� Klint said.
The rise of AI brings a host of other risks, she said. It can empower 鈥渕alicious actors鈥� by making it , such as by automating phishing attempts or creating advanced malware.
With AI, 鈥測ou don鈥檛 need to be the sharpest tool in the shed to be a malicious actor,鈥� Klint said.
It can even poison data that is scraped off the internet to train other AI systems, which is 鈥渋ncredibly difficult to reverse鈥� and could result in further embedding biases into AI models, she said.
The other big global concern for respondents of the risk survey centered around climate change.
Following disinformation and misinformation, is the second-most-pressing short-term risk.
In the long term 鈥� defined as 10 years 鈥� extreme weather was described as the No. 1 threat, followed by four other : critical change to Earth systems; biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse; and natural resource shortages.
鈥淲e could be pushed past that irreversible climate change tipping point鈥� over the next decade as the Earth鈥檚 systems undergo long-term changes, Klint said.
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