UN chief wants code vs. ‘misinformation’

ALARM over advancements in artificial intelligence must not obscure the “grave” harm already being done by digital platforms rife with misinformation, UN chief Antonio Guterres said Monday, as he proposed an international code of conduct.

Rapidly developing AI tools, including chatbots, image generators and voice cloning technology, have sparked global concern over their striking ability to disseminate falsehoods.

Guterres said he endorsed the idea for the creation of an AI watchdog body similar to the International Atomic En-

Ex-Samsung exec charged with stealing firm’s secrets

A FORMER Samsung executive has been charged with stealing company secrets for a copycat computer chip factory in China, and is being held in detention pending trial, prosecutors told AFP on Tuesday.

The 65-year-old man, who has not been identified, allegedly stole Samsung trade secrets in a bid to set up a chip factory in the Chinese city of Xian—near where Samsung has a plant—the Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office said in a separate statement.

The material he stole was classified as “national core technology” – innovations designated by South Korean law as potentially having a major negative impact on national security and the economy if disclosed overseas.

“He’s currently detained at the Suwon Detention Center,” the spokesperson of the Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office told AFP, adding the suspect had been held for some time but only formally charged on Monday.

Securing supplies of advanced chips has become a crucial issue internationally, with the United States and China locked in a fierce battle for control of the market.

Samsung is one of the world’s largest makers of memory chips and smartphones, and its overall turnover is equivalent to about onefifth of South Korea’s gross domestic product.

The Samsung factory blueprints and clean-room designs from 2018 and 2019 that the man allegedly tried to steal would have been worth at least 300 billion won ($236 million) to Samsung, authorities said. AFP ergy Agency (IAEA), but noted that “only member states can create it, not the Secretariat of the United Nations.”

He added that while alarm bells over AI were “deafening,” they must not “distract us from the damage digital technology is already doing to our world.”

“The proliferation of hate and lies in the digital space is causing grave global harm now,” Guterres told a news conference while presenting a policy brief on the subject.

“It is fueling conflict, death and destruction now. It is threatening democracy and human rights now.”

Guterres said a “United Nations Code of Conduct for information integrity on digital platforms” was being developed ahead of the UN’s “Summit of the Future” slated for next year.

His policy brief, which will feed the code of conduct, includes a slew of pro- posals, including that advertisers implicated in monetizing harmful content take full responsibility for their spending.

“Disinformation and hate should not generate maximum exposure and massive profits,” Guterres said.

While unleashing social and cultural transformation globally, online platforms have also “exposed a darker side,” he warned.

“The ability to disseminate largescale disinformation to undermine scientifically established facts poses an existential risk to humanity,” he insisted,