Chief Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo has urged the country’s legislators and policymakers to ensure that technology like artificial intelligence (AI) “will be beneficial to our people and will respect, protect, and uphold their rights.”
“Technology must be used for the benefit of the people to address longstanding problems like inequality and injustice,” the Chief Justice said in his keynote speech at the Manila Social Good Summit 2023 last Sept. 16 in Taguig City.
He cautioned that “there is a need to engage with technology critically and not to embrace the same heedlessly.”
He pointed out: “Even as we use its tools—more and more of them becoming indispensable in how we live and work—we have to be mindful. We have to make space to think of things like ethical considerations, social impacts, environmental consequences, even its impacts on our own selves and relationships with others.”
A press briefer issued by the Supreme Court’s (SC) public information office (PIO) stated that Gesmundo “highlighted the importance of sustaining dialogue among the government, the tech industry, advocates, and experts from different areas of discipline, civil society, and ordinary citizens.”
In closing, the PIO said that Gesmundo stressed to the attendees that “the future is still ours to forge; that it is our hands on the wheel; that whatever happens next is up to us.”
It said the summit was organized by Rappler. Among the speakers were former United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Facebook whistleblower and data engineer Frances Haugen, author and entrepreneur Andrew Keen, and leaders in tech, business, and civil society.