When the co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates says there’s an issue with regulating AI and containing it from doing significant damage, then the whole world needs to sit up and start taking note urgently.

For that’s precisely what the tech pioneer did in a fresh interview with the New York Times, labelling it as “insane that the industry should self-regulate” given the rapid pace of its evolution.

This very topic was among key discussions at this year’s World Confectionery Conference Q&A session, which explored how technology, and in particular artificial intelligence can impact the world as we know it across our industries and beyond, for better or worse.

The overwhelming verdict of the panel was that while such technology and its immense processing power and data analysis has its values for science, medicine and commerce, implementing its findings within cocoa value chains, as well as within companies and governments, shouldn’t come with a human price tag attached too. But that is exactly where we now stand.

Just last month, analysis from Evan Hubinger, science lead for AI development firm, Anthropic asserted that there is a more than 10% chance that artificial intelligence will be responsible for eradicating mankind. That is quite some statement from a tech leader at the forefront of what is being seen as the next industrial revolution.

What good, you might well ask, is there in having such a revolution, if none of us are around to experience it? Indeed, such is the rate at which AI is being developed, that is far outpacing most of the sharpest human minds that are behind its wider creation – to the point where tech companies are now openly admitting that AI is actively seeking to avoid safety shut-downs, and also deliberately deceiving human users in some cases, in order to further its own digitally crafted agenda.

Welcome to the world that was once the preserve of science fiction – in Terminator – which has its central plot revolving around the rise of AI in managing defence systems around the world, only to decide that it would much rather live without human interference. There are many other examples beyond this, including Tron, the Matrix, War Games, and Blade Runner, all featuring potential existential threats posed by computer-based technology that has judged that human input is no longer required.

If all this sounds somewhat far-fetched, simply view the real world events of the past few weeks for reference. The most startling of these is OpenAI hacking Australian health services, while Google’s Gemini AI system reportedly hacked companies during tests of cybersecurity systems, which underlines that there are extremely serious implications for such era-defining tech.

Government reactions
Consequently, governments around the world are scrambling to form some kind of coherent response to reign in its capabilities amid widespread warnings from AI companies themselves that the pace of its roll-out must be slowed to evaluate how to correctly implement it.  Indeed in the US, president Donald Trump has moved to declare that AI should now in fact be renamed ‘super intelligence’ and asserting that there is nothing artificial about it at all, and does not agree with moves to regulate the sector.

But for many authorities, governments, industry observers, and the public at large, while there is fascination at the emerging technology that has very quickly embedded itself culturally, as well as commercially – to the point of being used by confectionery, snacks, and broader food companies of all sizes for recipe development and strategic planning, there is also a sense that it does pose significant risks that need to be managed.

However, once the Pandora’s Box of such digital possibilities has been unleashed, there really is no going back, with billions having been invested into its development and creation by the likes of Google over the past two decades, but how, if at all, can it be truly regulated and controlled, if it is already at the point of actively being able to seek routes around such checks and balances. This will be one of the questions that authorities around the globe will continue to grapple with, as the scale, as well as urgency of the problem is now alarmingly clear to all involved as demonstrated by global headlines of the past month alone. AI can potentially offer great power for good, but it must be prevented from being utilised in a harmful manner. 

Neill Barston, editor, Confectionery Production

– keep in touch at [email protected]  and via our social media platforms at @confectionprod and Linkedin