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Committee for the Future heard AI probably as the first parliamentary committee in the world

Published 4/9/2021 4:30 PM

Committee for the Future heard AI probably as the first parliamentary committee in the world

​The Committee for the Future is preparing a statement on EU's strategic foresight. As part of related hearings, the committee was probably the first committee in the world to hear artificial intelligence called GPT-3. For the meeting, committee experts had created two different “personalities" of artificial intelligence, Muskie and Saara.

“I think I am speaking on behalf of the whole committee that this was one of the most interesting meetings ever. Experiments with artificial intelligence will certainly continue", chairman of the committee Joakim Strand said after the meeting.

GTP-3 is artificial intelligence is not a debating system in itself but can produce and continue text seamlessly. GTP-3 applications generate, for example, sales letters, reports, explanations, and lines of dialogue. It is currently the most advanced system capable of human-like dialogue with 170 billion parameters in its neural network.

At the meeting, MPs first asked questions orally and then via chat. Committee experts wrote the questions for the AI on a shared screen. The answers were discussed, and further questions asked. The members of the committee asked the AI questions particularly related to the UN Agenda2030 on which the committee is currently preparing a report. The discussion focused, among other things, on the causes of poverty, unemployment, education, and the role of technology in poverty eradication and sustainable development. GPT-3 also highlighted Finland's opportunities in regional Talent Hubs.

The final discussion analysed the significance of technologies such as artificial intelligence as an opportunity and a threat. The aim has not been to come up with the best possible answers to problems, but to provide as illustrative examples as possible of how artificial intelligence handles problematic issues and how it responds to them.

The Committee for the Future wants to find our whether artificial intelligence could be used to provide views and information or in the creation of arguments and counterarguments in a similar way as human experts. In the near future, the committee plans to commission a report which would be entirely prepared by artificial intelligence. The committee outlined that these experiments must definitely be continued, and the committee will return to the issue already in its next meeting. A report will be prepared on the hearing of the AI and the committee will continue to exploit and test GTP-3 and other AI applications on other issues at a later stage.​​

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