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Today, the population of the virtual world reached about 3.5 billion, which makes 45% of our real world population. Facebook alone hosts about 2.25 billion people, and soon it will exceed China and India combined in the number of population, bearing in mind that the growth rate of the virtual world population is 9% while the highest rate for population growth in the world is 2.4% only.
Such numbers highlight a revelation that calls for the attention of highest levels globally, especially in the light of the huge vulnerabilities in internet used by promoters of hatred and terrorism, which was manifested in several incidents, notably New Zealand attack, which was live broadcasted on Facebook and watched by millions of people, children, women and men.
At the “Tech for Good” Summit in Paris, this fact dominated everyone. The key question was how to handle it right, return to the fundamentals of defining roles and responsibilities among the partners who are all in the same boat, working together so that things do not get out of control any more than they actually are.
International leaders such as French President Macron, prime ministers of Norway, UK and Canada, have sat with their counterparts in technology world; particularly the big corporate executives of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM.
The situation in this year’s meetings is different from the first one in 2018. Technology and internet giants are no longer able to evade their responsibilities by claiming they only provide networking platforms and are not responsible for what goes in or through them. Such excuses had been accepted before, however the risks we face today are too critical to accept them. The fire has reached the homes of millions of people, and waiting is no longer an option as such tragedies might be repeated and more lives would be lost.
At that unique summit where politics, business and technology gathered, one draws conclusions that may serve as titles of an open global debate. First, the challenges of today's world require a real, responsible and cross-border partnership; a partnership in which the parties undertake a radical revision of the conventional responsibilities of each party. In today's world, we have shared and overlapped responsibilities, because the risks do not distinguish between one race and another, or between one religion and another.
There is something important that everyone has to put in the micro-audit laboratory, the concept of freedom that some take as an excuse to tampering with people's destinies. Uncontrolled freedom and absolute repression are alike, both opens the box of evil and creates fertile soil to fuel the flames of hatred and extremism.
The real lesson that can be drawn from this summit and its surrounding circumstances is that no matter how technology evolved, it is man who should lead it, not vice versa. The proposal made by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at the summit to develop an artificial intelligence system that foresees risks and predicts hate trends on social networks was not met with the enthusiasm that the proponent expected. The reason, as some analysts point out, is that Facebook itself is the product of Artificial Intelligence(AI), and one AI is unlikely to solve problems caused by another AI unless it is man who holds the helm by restoring his effective role in legislation, implementation and monitoring.
Honoring the summit slogan "Technology for Good" requires qualitative approaches that take into account the social, educational, economic, security and other aspects. Otherwise, this slogan remains ... a slogan.
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