Chief Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo has urged the nation’s legislators and policymakers to make sure that know-how like synthetic intelligence (AI) “will be beneficial to our people and will respect, protect, and uphold their rights.”

“Technology must be used for the benefit of the people to address longstanding problems like inequality and injustice,” the Chief Justice stated in his keynote speech on the Manila Social Good Summit 2023 final Sept. 16 in Taguig City.

He cautioned that “there is a need to engage with technology critically and not to embrace the same heedlessly.”

He identified: “Even as we use its tools—more and more of them becoming indispensable in how we live and work—we have to be mindful. We have to make space to think of things like ethical considerations, social impacts, environmental consequences, even its impacts on our own selves and relationships with others.”

A press briefer issued by the Supreme Court’s (SC) public data workplace (PIO) said that Gesmundo “highlighted the importance of sustaining dialogue among the government, the tech industry, advocates, and experts from different areas of discipline, civil society, and ordinary citizens.”

In closing, the PIO stated that Gesmundo confused to the attendees that “the future is still ours to forge; that it is our hands on the wheel; that whatever happens next is up to us.”

It stated the summit was organized by Rappler.  Among the audio system had been former United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Facebook whistleblower and information engineer Frances Haugen, writer and entrepreneur Andrew Keen, and leaders in tech, enterprise, and civil society.