<\/p>\n
Are democratic societies ready for a future in which AI\u00a0algorithmically assigns limited supplies<\/a>\u00a0of respirators or hospital beds during pandemics? Or one in which\u00a0AI fuels an arms race<\/a>\u00a0between disinformation creation and detection? Or sways court decisions with amicus briefs written to mimic the rhetorical and argumentative styles of Supreme Court justices?<\/p>\n Decades of research show that most democratic societies\u00a0struggle to hold nuanced debates<\/a>\u00a0about new technologies. These discussions need to be informed not only by the best available science but also by the numerous ethical, regulatory, and social considerations of their use. Difficult dilemmas posed by artificial intelligence are already emerging at a rate that overwhelms modern democracies\u2019 ability to collectively work through those problems.<\/p>\n Broad public engagement, or the lack of it, has been a long-running challenge in assimilating emerging technologies and is key to tackling the challenges they bring.<\/p>\n Striking a balance between the awe-inspiring possibilities of emerging technologies like AI and the need for societies to think through both intended and unintended outcomes is not a new challenge. Almost 50 years ago, scientists and policymakers met in Pacific Grove, California, for what is often referred to as the\u00a0Asilomar Conference<\/a>\u00a0to decide the future of recombinant DNA research, or transplanting genes from one organism into another. Public participation and input into their deliberations was minimal.<\/p>\n Societies are severely limited in their ability to anticipate and mitigate unintended consequences of rapidly emerging technologies like AI without good-faith engagement from broad cross-sections of public and expert stakeholders. And there are real downsides to limited participation. If Asilomar had sought such wide-ranging input 50 years ago, it is likely that the issues of cost and access would have shared the agenda with the science and the ethics of deploying the technology. If that had happened, the\u00a0lack of affordability<\/a>\u00a0of recent\u00a0CRISPR-based sickle cell<\/a>\u00a0treatments, for example, might\u2019ve been avoided.<\/p>\n AI runs a very real risk of creating similar blind spots when it comes to intended and unintended consequences that will often not be obvious to elites like tech leaders and policymakers. If societies fail to ask \u201cthe right questions, the ones people care about,\u201d science and technology studies scholar\u00a0Sheila Jasanoff<\/a>\u00a0said in a 2021 interview<\/a>, \u201cthen no matter what the science says, you wouldn\u2019t be producing the right answers or options for society.\u201d<\/p>\n \nReady or not, unintended consequences<\/h2>\n