Business leaders in G20 countries are more concerned about economic risks than cyber risks, although many fear “adverse outcomes” stemming from AI use, according to new World Economic Forum (WEF) research.
The data comes from WEF’s new Executive Opinion Survey, which is based on interviews with 11,000 business executives who reside in G20 member nations. They were asked to select the top five risks most likely to pose the biggest threat to their country in the next two years.
An economic downturn was the top-cited risk, followed by “labor/talent shortages” and “inflation,” according to the aggregate view across all respondents. “Poverty/inequality” and “extreme weather events” rounded out the top five.
This is somewhat at odds from the findings of the WEF Global Risks Report 2024, released in January 2024, which placed “misinformation and disinformation” top and “cyber insecurity” in fourth place.
However, executives in Western countries are still concerned about the impact of specific cyber-related threats.
According to the Executive Opinion Survey, “adverse outcomes of artificial intelligence technologies” ranked in the top five near-term risks in the UK (fourth), US (third) and Canada (fifth), while coming top in Indonesia.
Misinformation/disinformation also ranked fourth in Germany and joint fifth in Canada.
The execs in these countries are right to be concerned about AI. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) warned back in January that malicious AI use will “almost certainly” drive an increase in the volume and impact of cyber-attacks over the next two years.
AI is also linked to the risk of misinformation/disinformation, given that generative AI is already being used by Russian propagandists to influence public opinion.
Back in May, Recorded Future revealed that the “CopyCop” disinformation campaign was using GenAI to copy content from mainstream media, and then introduce political bias to tailor that content for specific audiences. These efforts effectively weaponized legitimate content to support Russian influence objectives, by sowing division over the Israel-Hamas conflict, undermining support for Ukraine and more.