Limit AI now or humanity will lose its agency, says Nobel laureate Ressa

Artificial intelligence has captured humanity's attention through social media, manipulating our biology by exploiting our need for intimacy, and now threatens to strip us of our agency, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa warned. As co-chair of the United Nations' international scientific panel on AI, Ressa argues that citizens must push for regulation to safeguard our freedom and public safety.

She views the issue as a public safety concern rather than a freedom of speech debate. Ressa, co-founder and CEO of news outlet Rappler, says we are witnessing three AI waves: social media platforms capturing attention, chatbots exploiting intimacy, and now, the most dangerous - agency itself, through frontier models creating machines that act on our behalf.

Critics, including US President Donald Trump, dismiss calls to regulate AI, but Ressa dismisses their concerns as "good spin," pointing out that China enforces more safeguards for its citizens than Silicon Valley does for the rest of the world. She emphasizes that the first step to bring about change is to hold tech companies accountable for the damage they've caused, citing successful US lawsuits against Meta Platforms that resulted in a $18 billion fine and strict limits on teenage use of Facebook and Instagram.

Ressa also advocates for age limits on social media, not just for teenagers, but for all adults, as these platforms have become addictive for everyone. She suggests creating communication platforms built on open-source, secure, and decentralized protocols like Matrix, akin to public works like green parks, to allow safe digital conversations and empower democracies.