Limit AI now or humanity will lose its agency, says

What happened

Artificial intelligence, having hijacked humanity's attention through social media and our biology by manipulating our need for intimacy, will take away our agency unless we legislate now to limit it, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa said.

President Donald Trump, have rejected industry calls to regulate AI over fears of losing the AI race to China. Ressa dismissed that argument as "good spin". "China actually puts more safeguards in place for its citizens than Silicon Valley does for the rest of the world. S.

"Communication platforms built by public interest groups, away from the control of Big Tech, should be created, in the same way public works such green parks were created, something Rappler did when it launched Rappler Communities in 2023, she said.

"It's a place where people can be safe in the digital sphere, where they can talk to each other and more importantly, listen to each other so that the great work of democracy happens," she said.

Why it matters

The Filipino and American journalist, who jointly won the 2021 award in part for her work documenting the power of large tech companies, serves as co-chair of the United Nations' international scientific panel on artificial intelligence, tasked with assessing how AI is transforming lives worldwide. Ressa says citizens must campaign for regulation on AI to put pressure on politicians to introduce legislation.

"It is not a freedom of speech issue to ask for regulation. "I think we're at that phase where if this doesn't happen, we will tip ... (It) will be beyond our control if we don't step in now," she said in an interview during a visit to Oslo to speak at a conference on threats against democracies. "Artificial intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent.

It's been around for about 70 years, and there have been three waves that have already hit the public," she said. She described the first phase as social media platforms capturing attention, polarising societies and isolating individuals in the process. "The second phase was hacking our biology, again through intimacy: the chatbots," Ressa said. S.

What to watch

lawsuits that led Meta Platforms to pay up to $18 billion over the next decade and strictly limit how teenagers use Facebook and Instagram. "We know this is harmful, so you should remove the addictive features, not just for teenagers, but for all of us," Ressa said.