The 18th Istanbul Informatics Congress was organised by the Turkish Informatics Association (Türkiye Bilişim Derneği – TBD), which is one of the oldest informatics associations in the world, with the agenda of “Crossing Borders in E-Commerce with Artificial Intelligence”. Representers from the public and private sectors came together in the congress, thus the participants had the opportunity to learn about how artificial intelligence technologies are used in various sectors.
Although the agenda of the congress was about artificial intelligence and e-commerce, the speakers mentioned various topics such as how artificial intelligence was used in municipalities and city management, and smart city practices in Istanbul were explained by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality officials and Mrs. Sinem Dedetaş, Mayor of Üsküdar Municipality. Cyber security was another important topic of the congress. Issues regarding safe internet, combating cybercrimes and the protection of information systems from cyber-attacks were discussed by experts. Consequently, the congress was very beneficial for anyone interested in artificial intelligence.
In our opinion, it is obvious that artificial intelligence is of great importance for all sectors and its importance will keep increasing in the coming decades. Therefore, what we should foresee how the interaction between humans and machines will be transformed by artificial intelligence and its negative consequences. We can ensure effective regulations only by this way.
Industrial revolution contributed our lives by enabling more accessible products, mass communication and many other services, especially health. On the other hand, it also had negative consequences such as environmental problems, increased social inequality and alienation.
These negative consequences of industrial revolution will be exacerbated due to the increasing influence of artificial intelligence in every aspect. In order to prevent the world of the future from evolving into a cyber-punk dystopia, we have to make the necessary regulations today. However, regulating the technologies of the tomorrow from today is a difficult task for our visions of tomorrow may not be accurate, so the regulations made will not correspond the reality. It is doubles that this will undermine the effectiveness of regulations. That is why we believe that such academic and sectoral meetings are of great importance.
Att. Celil Aktaş, LL.M.
