In a report released Tuesday, a United Nations agency warned that generative artificial intelligence could distort the history of the Holocaust and incite anti-Semitism.
The report, published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in collaboration with the World Jewish Congress, outlines ways in which AI is particularly vulnerable to spreading anti-Semitic content and urges AI companies and governments to: UNESCO’s ethical principles.
“If we allow the horrific facts of the Holocaust to be diluted, distorted or falsified through irresponsible use of AI, we risk an explosion of anti-Semitism and a gradual erosion of our understanding of the causes and consequences of these atrocities,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in a press release.
“There is an urgent need to implement UNESCO’s recommendations on AI ethics so that younger generations can grow up based on facts and not fabrications,” Azoulay continued.
“Generative AI systems that are trained on large amounts of data are particularly vulnerable to fueling existing anti-Semitic bias, either unintentionally or if malicious actors exploit the systems. Without proper vigilance, AI systems can easily be manipulated to incorporate data from fringe parts of the internet that promote conspiracy theories and misleading claims,” the report said.
Generative AI systems can also be used to create deepfakes, which are seemingly realistic images of the Holocaust that can be manipulated to look authentic in order to suggest that the Holocaust never happened.
The Holocaust killed six million Jews in Europe after the Nazi party rose to power in the early 1940s, or one-third of the world’s Jewish population. The report warned that AI models could become too focused on familiar images and moments from the Holocaust and miss important, more complex information. The report also warned about “hallucinations,” or the possibility that models may compensate for information that is not easily accessible.
Reports I got it. 80% of people between the ages of 10 and 24 use AI several times a day for education or other purposes, which could exacerbate prejudice.
