Public need to know AI is there for good, not evil
AI’s often negative perception based on villainous intelligent technology in films and novels must be better managed to help public confidence.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on modernising employment was told this week that the negative feelings surrounding artificial intelligence must be dealt with to raise the public’s confidence in developing its role in the UK’s future.
Creations such as Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Machines from The Matrix and the Cybermen (pictured) from Doctor Who have influenced the public to fear technology that could develop independent thinking of their own and terrorise or at the least take over jobs from humans.
“There is a well-trodden path that can sometimes position technology as something to be feared,” said Lord Kulveer Ranger, a technology and transport expert who addressed the APPG. “I think that’s one of the big challenges we have when we start thinking about this technology. How do we encourage people to consider it will be something they will actually have much more benefit from and can have control over?”
Lord Ranger said the UK has a “very great opportunity” in the “global race of developing AI, building AI businesses, and then helping in terms of the adoption of AI”.
“But,” he added, “we must take the British people with us, and we need to have a governmental narrative that is balances and supports that.”
He went on to say: “So, we have to help shape a positive sense around the opportunity and the jobs of the future, and the culture of the future, and the style of work of the future.
“I think that will be one of the fundamental challenges for policy makers and parliamentarians to ensure that the work that we do in legislation, in bills that will come that will support various sectors and their adoption of technology, that we get that right balance of giving confidence that the technology is there, and AI is there to help, and it will help in a way that you want it to help you.”
More than 100 people attended the virtual APPG meeting on AI in work held on Tuesday [21 January 2025], including Recruiter.
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