The benefits and also dangers of agentic AI at a time when Europe is striving to become more competitive in Artificial Intelligence were the focus of a discussion between Digital Governance Minister Dimitris Papastergiou, acclaimed scientist Francis Fukuyama and experts in the field on Wednesday, at the Economist's 29th Annual Government Roundtable in Athens.
Papastergiou stressed that what we have known of AI up until now is its use of data and "that what is has learned to do, and it does more quickly and possibly more accurately than human beings". Therefore, the first thing we must see is what data we are supplying ti AI."
"What also concerns me is what we see more and more, especially in regions and countries where there are elections, is the quality of democracy," he added, citing instances where AI tools had tampered with voter opinions and behaviour through deepfakes, bots and other such phenomena.
Regarding the fears that AI would make people redundant, the minister noted that such conflicts arose at every industrial revolution, though this might be a more extreme case, but stressed that "it is up to us to keep AI next to us for the jobs that we cannot do so accurately or which we find tedious.
Fukuyama referred to the dangers presented by so-called "agentic AI" that is capable of making autonomous decisions, noting that there were two kinds. One was the use of this technology by "bad people for evil ends", noting that this was a process that was ongoing and included such things as deepfakes, hacking, criminal scams and election rigging. The second, and according to Fukuyama more dangerous, was not linked to generative AI but 'agentic AI' that took initiatives and the risk of making the right decisions.

ANA-MPA is a COMMUNICATION SUPPORTER of the "29th Annual Government Roundtable - Walking steadily across a tightrope of uncertainty"
Photos from the conference:
https://www.amna.gr/pr-photo
On camera statements:
https://www.amna.gr/video-services/544358/Corporate%20Videos (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/user/AMNAwebTV (YouTube)
https://we.tl/SG16Qml4bD (physical archives)