IMF-World Bank meetings focus on global risks and potential benefits of AI

BANGKOK (AP) — Guardrails are urgently needed to contain potential risks from the boom in artificial intelligence, the head of the International Monetary Fund said Friday, likening the technology to a Formula 1 race car that might go off the track and run people over.

“We are racing, and the question is how do we put barriers? So if a car was to fly out it doesn’t kill people,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said.

“I have high respect for the industry. I think what you’re doing is incredibly important for humanity. You may give us the biggest gift, but if the car runs over people, that gift may not be so worthwhile,” she said while speaking on a panel on the impact of AI on the world economy along with experts including Anthropic co-founder and head of policy Jack Clark.

Clark is among technology industry leaders pushing for faster action on regulating AI. In a blog post last month, the rival to OpenAI proposed that the world’s top artificial intelligence companies come up with a coordinated way to pause development of advanced AI systems, warning the technology is improving so quickly there’s a risk humans would lose control.

“I think it’s worse than you describe. I think it’s Formula 1 at night without maybe brakes in the cars,” Clark said. “And it’s remarkable to me that the toys I buy for my children are regulated more than the literal superintelligence I work on at my day job.”

He added that the effort to build policy frameworks to regulate AI is underway.

“The world is now taking this seriously, and I think if we take it seriously, we are going to be able to get our arms around it,” Clark said. “But it cannot only be companies making these decisions. And if we’re negligent about this, we’re going to get some form of chaos.”

The impact of AI on jobs is yet to be fully understood, but an IMF study found three main trends. About 10% of jobs might be transformed or newly created, while work involving repetitive tasks will be gone, Georgieva said.

The third category will be service sector jobs generated by people who benefit from the investment boom.

“The net impact is positive,” she said, though she added that “services don’t pay a lot.”

“So you get young people who normally would have gone into professional routine jobs now serving coffee in Starbucks. And that is not what I think young people in the world aspire for,” she said.

Tiff Mackem, the governor of the Bank of Canada, compared that to the effects on employment from more open trade, which has generated great global wealth and raised millions out of poverty. But many millions also lost their livelihoods as manufacturers moved jobs to China and other developing countries.

He said “in aggregate there is an overall benefit,” but acknowledged that in both trade and technology “there will be winners and losers.”

“You have to find a way to help the losers,” Macklem said. “Without a system to help them cope with the loss you get a backlash.”

Dozens of people marched in Bangkok on Thursday and Friday in peaceful protests, seeking to draw attention to growing inequality and other frustrations.

Georgieva noted that to ensure that the benefits of AI can reach the maximum number of people, they have to have electricity and access to digital networks. Cybersecurity also is essential.

During the wide ranging session, the speakers were also asked about how they used AI in their own lives. Georgieva said she’d used it to track calories and lose weight.

The IMF chief, who has described her personal AI assistant as bossy, joked that she’d like AI agents to be more polite.

“I mean, the agents we get, they can be really annoying,” she said. “So can we work on, like, their manners?”

Maybe, said Clark.

“We have this dial between sycophantic and rude,” he said. “So we’ll spin it around the other way.”

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AP journalists Haruka Nuga, Tian MacLeod Ji and Sakchai Lalit contributed.