Global Tipping Points 2026: AI and HI

We cannot expect the technology of tomorrow to be better than the humans of today. So, if we want Artificial Intelligence and other tech to be better, then we need to improve as people. Dr Cornelia Walther, from our hosts the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health, joins us at the Global Tipping Points 2026 Conference at Sunway University to discuss AI’s links to tipping points, and to the future of humanity. The complexity of AI makes it hard to know what’s to come, but Cornelia stresses the technology can be both good and bad. The problem is it operates on the garbage in, garbage out principle, when we need it to work on a values in, values out basis. If we want to see that change, we must alter our priorities. As the last of the analogue generations, living through the move towards a time of hybrid intelligence (HI) – mixing natural intelligence and AI – we consider the effects on our brains of delegating previously everyday functions to the phone in our pocket or the computer on our desk. Will it lead to us all having robot partners?! We find ourselves asking, how can we avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and take advantage of AI as a force for good? This episode was produced in conjunction with the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health, hosts of the conference.