Doha: A symposium was convened as part of the cultural salon activities at the 35th Doha International Book Fair (DIBF).
The event called for the establishment of specialised national councils tasked with monitoring knowledge flows and addressing challenges related to digital media and artificial intelligence.
Coming under the theme of building knowledge through culture and media, the symposium featured the remarks of Qatari writer Maryam Yassin Al Hammadi, who highlighted the importance of building societal awareness capable of dealing with the rapid transformations in the era of technology and algorithms.
It is very significant to formulate upper echelon consultative commissions that comprise experts in media, culture, AI, and national security, with the objective of identifying knowledge gaps before they turn into real threats, Al Hammadi suggested, noting that building media sovereignty has become an imperative amid global digital transformations.
The panel tackled global realignments in the post-globalisation era and the ascension of the digital economy, highlighting that humans have shifted from being consumers of knowledge to being a commodity handled by algorithms that direct their options.
The session warned of the menace of algorithms’ control over the daily knowledge flow, emphasising that “the algorithm does not lie, but it chooses, and in this choice lies the danger.”
Furthermore, the panel drilled down on the knowledge future in the era of AI, indicating that current models are based on past data and wield the biases of the entities that developed them, making Arabic content in a vulnerable position in the face of the dominance of Western content in training data.
