The Nobel laureate and UN AI panel co-chair told Reuters in Oslo that agentic and multi-agent systems will take away human agency unless citizens push for regulation and tech accountability now.
Artificial intelligence will take away human agency unless societies legislate now to limit it, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa told Reuters in Oslo on September 15.
Ressa, a Filipino and American journalist who jointly won the 2021 Peace Prize and co-chairs the United Nations international scientific panel on artificial intelligence, said AI has already hijacked attention through social media and manipulated intimacy through chatbots. The third wave, she said, is agency itself: agentic and multi-agentic frontier systems that "don't just pretend to be human, but act for us." She said citizens must campaign for regulation to pressure politicians. "It is not a freedom of speech issue to ask for regulation. It's a public safety issue," said the Rappler co-founder and CEO. "I think we're at that phase where if this doesn't happen, we will tip … (It) will be beyond our control if we don't step in now."
Ressa dismissed arguments that Western regulation would cede advantage to China as "good spin," saying China puts more safeguards in place for its citizens than Silicon Valley does for the rest of the world, citing age restrictions on China's TikTok version. She said the first step is making companies responsible for damage they have done, and welcomed U.S. lawsuits that led Meta to pay up to $18 billion over the next decade and strictly limit how teenagers use Facebook and Instagram.
She welcomed EU and Australian moves to put age limits on social media but said they do not fix the "fundamental flaw" that addictive features harm adults too. "We know this is harmful, so you should remove the addictive features, not just for teenagers, but for all of us," she said. She also called for communication platforms built by public-interest groups away from Big Tech control, pointing to Rappler Communities, a Matrix-based app launched in 2023 that Rappler is extending to other Southeast Asian outlets.
This brief covers Ressa's Oslo interview as reported. It does not evaluate the UN panel's full scientific report or treat any national AI law as already enacted.