UN Secretary General Highlights Threats from Digital Technologies and Climate Change

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres held two press briefings at UN headquarters in New York last week. The first briefing dealt with the risks of artificial intelligence and social media digital technologies. The second briefing dealt with climate change.

In his June 12^th press briefing, Secretary General Guterres said, “New technology is moving at warp speed. And so are the threats that come with it. Alarm bells over the latest form of artificial intelligence – generative AI – are deafening.” He expressed the fear shared by many of the future evolution of AI that “completely abolishes human agency and creates a monster that nobody will be able to control.”

But Secretary General Guterres focused most of his remarks to reporters on what he said was “the damage digital technology is already doing to our world,” in the form of hate speech and disinformation on social media platforms.

“Digital platforms are being misused to subvert science and spread disinformation and hate to billions of people,” the Secretary General declared. “This clear and present global threat demands clear and coordinated global action.”

Mr. Guterres used his remarks to the press to promote the UN’s policy brief on information integrity on digital platforms. “Its proposals are aimed at creating guardrails to help governments come together around guidelines that promote facts, while exposing conspiracies and lies, and safeguarding freedom of expression and information,” he said.

Secretary General Guterres said that the policy brief was a prelude to developing an international Code of Conduct. He envisions voluntary compliance by “governments, digital platforms and other stakeholders” with the Code of Conduct principles together with “some inter-governmental processes defining red lines” utilizing a “regulatory framework” and “soft law mechanisms” established by the UN Member States.

There are several fundamental problems with what the Secretary General is suggesting.

First, whose “facts” is the Secretary General talking about that need to be promoted under international guidelines? The scientists and policy makers who told us that people who were vaccinated against the coronavirus could not transmit the virus to other people, which has since been disproven?

Who gets to judge where the line is between the truth and disinformation or which AI generating digital platforms would benefit versus threaten humankind?

The scientists and policy makers who told us that schools must be closed for long periods of time to stop the spread of the virus, which proved to be unnecessarily harmful to the children’s educational development? Or the scientists who derided the hypothesis that the coronavirus originated in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology as a conspiracy theory when a leak from that lab is now viewed by experts as the most plausible explanation for where the virus came from?

Second, who gets to judge where the line is between the truth and disinformation or which AI generating digital platforms would benefit versus threaten humankind? A globalist regulatory agency under the UN umbrella that would add more bureaucratic functions to the UN’s already bloated bureaucracy, threaten free speech, and interfere with private sector innovation? That is the last thing we need.

Third, the Secretary General could not explain how this would all work, given the wide divergence between democratic and authoritarian regimes on Internet access and freedom of expression. He cannot provide a credible explanation because bridging this fundamental divide is impossible, rendering an international agreement on “red lines” and “soft law mechanisms” meaningless as well as unenforceable.

On June 15^th, Secretary General Guterres held a press conference focusing on the climate where he repeated his warning about the existential threat posed by climate change.

“The climate agenda is being undermined,” the Secretary General said in his opening remarks. “At a time when we should be accelerating action, there is backtracking. At a time when we should be filling gaps, those gaps are growing.” He added that “the collective response remains pitiful. We are hurtling towards disaster, eyes wide open — with far too many willing to bet it all on wishful thinking, unproven technologies and silver bullet solutions.”

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Secretary General Guterres took aim at his favorite villain - the fossil fuel industry

Secretary General Guterres took aim at his favorite villain - the fossil fuel industry. “End licensing or funding of new oil and gas; stop the expansion of existing oil and gas reserves,” he said. “Trading the future for thirty pieces of silver is immoral,” the Secretary General added. He demanded that fossil fuel companies “cease and desist influence peddling” and other actions that he claimed were impeding progress towards the successful completion of the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.

The Secretary General also called upon financial institutions to “end financing and investment [in] exploration for new oil and gas fields, and expansion of oil and gas reserves.”

Again, there are several fundamental problems with what the Secretary General is suggesting.

First, government interference with the free market in terms of where energy companies and financial institutions should invest may well lead to top-down central planning, which squelches economic growth and innovation, creates energy shortages, and costs good-paying jobs.

Second, Secretary General Guterres is too negative in downplaying the crucial role that technologies such as artificial intelligence and carbon capture and storage can play in the fight against human-caused climate change. Instead of transferring billions of dollars to developing countries as undeserved reparations from wealthier countries for so-called “loss and damage” from natural disasters they blame on wealthier countries' greenhouse emissions, the money should be used to finance the development of impactful technologies.

The Secretary General described China as an “emerging” economy when it is the second largest economy in the world

Third, Secretary General Guterres and other senior UN officials let China, the largest emitter of dangerous greenhouse gases by far, get off easy even though China is currently building more coal plants than the rest of the world combined. The Secretary General described China as an “emerging” economy when it is the second largest economy in the world. He seemed content for China to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, possibly even 2060, while expecting the United States and other developed countries to commit to reaching the net-zero target as close as possible to 2040. That would give China a massively unfair economic advantage.

Fourth, the twenty-eighth United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 28) will be held in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates later this year, with the head of the UAE’s national oil company, Sultan al-Jaber, playing the leading role at the UN conference. The fossil fuel company that Mr. al-Jaber heads is investing billions of dollars in expanding its oil production and delivery capacity, as well as in a multi-billion-dollar offshore natural gas project.

Handing over leadership of the conference to a fossil fuel industry big shot has at least the appearance of putting the fox in charge of guarding the hen house. It undercuts the credibility of the Secretary General’s repeated calls for the fossil fuel industry to stop exploring for new oil and gas and to stop expanding existing oil and gas reserves.

While Secretary General Guterres raised legitimate concerns in his two press briefings about digital technologies and climate change, his suggested remedies are highly problematic for a variety of reasons.

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