"The head of a non-profit organisation for artificial intelligence research has been dismissed and reinstated four days later." A few years ago, such an event would have attracted at most the audience of a specialist computer magazine. Today, it fills the headlines of major newspapers everywhere. "A discovery that could threaten humanity," proclaimed one of the headlines.

What is it? Because artificial intelligence is long past its infancy. The developments that scientists have made in this field in the last six months are much faster than they have managed in the last ten years. The latest chatbots can now handle much more than a banal conversation about the weather. A number of universities are changing the rules for final student evaluations because of the development of artificial intelligence, simply because they haven't found a way to verify whether the final paper was written by a human or a robot. Society will have to adapt to such a change. We, Czech diplomacy, must also respond to these trends. We have already begun the first steps.

A few days ago, we succeeded in pushing through a resolution at the United Nations on the protection and promotion of human rights in the context of digital technologies. At the heart of this resolution is an appeal for us to ensure the protection of human rights in the material world as well as in the digital environment. The world of ones and zeros is not a zone outside the scope of international law. Here, too, we must respect human rights and uphold democratic values. People and human interests and goals must also remain at the heart of the digital world.

The content of the resolution does not only concern the Internet environment, it also addresses the protection of human rights in relation to new technologies such as artificial intelligence. There is no doubt that the deployment of these technologies in our daily lives can simplify and improve many things. Artificial intelligence can help us to find relevant information, it will improve medical services and streamline processes in logistics or in production.

I also believe that new technologies can help us in many ways to extend or promote human rights and freedoms. Advanced artificial intelligence-based translators are helping us to break down existing language barriers. For example, a panel at this year's Forum 2000 discussed the potential of large-scale language models for those seeking access to uncensored information.

But the use and deployment of new technologies can also have a downside. Moreover, not all the implications of these changes have been sufficiently explored. Some we cannot even predict yet.

Some of you have already come across fake images or videos processed by artificial intelligence on the internet. There are already technologies capable of replicating the voice of a stranger in a believable way. The authenticity of such content is sometimes impossible to verify at first glance. So-called deep fake videos serve as a dangerous tool for influence peddling or unfair political campaigns. It is a gross violation of privacy and, what is more, a violation of the rights of all those who do not wish to be manipulated on purpose.

We should also approach with great caution technologies that can sense and evaluate human emotions, body language or physiological reactions to stimuli. Their deployment opens up a great deal of scope for abuse, whether for the purpose of misleading advertising or for the purpose of political manipulation, increased control and surveillance by authoritarian regimes. China and other non-democratic states are using or even abusing new technologies, including artificial intelligence, to control their populations, thereby seriously trampling on their rights. You may have heard of China's social credit systems, which assess scores or give credit to individuals for their actions and behaviour. If you fail to achieve the desired score, you may be punished - for example, denied access to certain services.

Last but not least, we must also not tolerate that the outputs generated by artificial intelligence reinforce or contribute to the reproduction of inequalities in society. If artificial intelligence is trained on data sets that are unbalanced, this will be reflected in its outputs, which will also be unbalanced. For this reason, it is important to emphasise transparency and accountability, from the very design of the system and the datasets on which the AI is trained to the scrutiny of its outputs.

And what does all this mean for diplomacy? Many of the risks I have discussed are inherently international in nature, not limited to the borders of a single state. They therefore need to be addressed through international cooperation. The first step should be effective regulation. Effective regulation should be accompanied by a functional system of international control, including the possible application of sanctions to those who break the rules.

The EU's proposed AI Act, the first ever attempt to regulate AI in the world, is a step in this direction. A possible framework for such regulation is also being discussed on other platforms, including the OECD. Czechia is actively participating in these discussions.

Further activities in this direction are also taking place at the UN, where the Secretary-General's Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence is being established this year. Czechia nominated its representative to this body, Professor Michal Pěchouček, a leading expert on artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, he was not successful in the final selection, but we will continue to be actively involved in similar initiatives in order to succeed next time.

We need to keep up with the development of new technologies. For our diplomacy, this implies a number of tasks. We need to promote Czech innovations in the world, support our scientists or strengthen strategic alliances with key partners. We want our partners to finally see the term "Czechia" as a modern country that is attractive to investors. A journalist recently asked me how I would describe the purpose of diplomacy. Simply put, it is the work of ensuring the existence and sovereignty of the state. Now, it should be added that we can hardly guarantee such a task without binding rules that also apply to the digital environment.