A central AI secretariat, a permanent scientific advisory board for artificial intelligence, two annual governance dialogues and other processes related to current hot topics – these are the ideas of a high-level working group set up by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The UN wants to get the green light from member states for the new role at the upcoming UN Future Summit. However, negotiations on the Global Digital Compact (GDC), which should include AI recommendations, were still ongoing on Thursday night.
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For UN positions at the speed of light, the working group has made the mark the UN Secretary-General hoped for. The 39-member panel established by Guterres, which took about ten months to complete, includes AI company representatives from OpenAI, Microsoft and Google and Alphabet, as well as AI experts from the Mexican Constitutional Court, the Vatican and renowned universities, and several government representatives.
Global raw materials, global use
Experts came from 33 countries. An attempt by the UN to address the problem of the lack of representation of countries from the Global South in existing AI governance approaches.
118 of the UN’s 194 Member States are not yet included in any of the regulatory instruments developed in industrialised countries and AI pioneer states. The UN also wants to address this representation problem with its new role. After all, the report says: Both the materials from which AI is made, from rare earths to data, and the use of AI are global.
A graphic on AI rules.
(Image: United Nations)
AI “Climate” Council, AI Governance Dialogues, AI Funds
They presented their report with a total of seven institutional recommendations for future summits.
In the future, an AI Council based on the model of the IPCC Climate Council will produce annual reports on technological developments, research results and deficits. The new body will also provide quarterly reports on topics related to AI applications to achieve the UN Development Goals. New emerging risks should also be processed in ad hoc reports.
The aim is to remain agile and provide a scientific basis for any governance decisions. It is not about replacing other institutions or national regulatory authorities, but about comparing and anticipating their practices,” said Carme Artigas, Spain’s former minister of state for digitization and AI, at a Thursday evening press conference in New York.
Green light for suggestions?
The AI Council has incorporated this directly into the draft proposal for the UN’s new digital charter, the Global Digital Compact (GDC). Member countries should decide on this at a future summit. According to the GDC draft, the members should be named by member states in consultation with stakeholders.
The GDC has also launched a twice-yearly AI governance dialogue to exchange best practice and misuse scenarios and attacks. As has the idea of a fund that is to be set up with government and private resources to promote work at the UN and the development of knowledge and capabilities around the world.
Suggestions not (yet) implemented
Four other recommendations made in the expert report were not explicitly included in the recently published GDC draft.
For example, an AI office that reports directly to the UN Secretary-General would likely go too far for some member states. Instead, members of the high-level panel saw it as a central hub to support a variety of initiatives, from an AI council to capacity building. The Capacity Building Network, which aims to provide early support for AI newcomer and latecomer countries, and the idea of developing a data governance framework for AI are missing. However, a separate chapter in the GDC is dedicated to the topic of data exchange and data flows.
The expert panel can envision more in terms of technical standardization. There is nothing in the recently published GDC version about the UN acting as a kind of clearinghouse for AI specifications (most standards have been designed by the ITU so far). Rather, AI organizations themselves are being asked to coordinate more.
No separate UN AI authority
The original idea of giving the UN its own full AI authority, in the style of the UN Nuclear Regulatory Authority, is off the table for now. The UN itself has toyed with it. “For now,” Indian diplomat Amandeep Singh Gill, the UN Secretary-General’s technology envoy, said at a press conference, “the panel decided that the UN does not need such an authority.”
The new AI initiative, which is to be decided early next week, is expected to lay the foundation for the UN’s role in the field of AI. “In the future, if the risks associated with AI require certain actions to be taken by such an institution, this can be reconsidered,” says Gill.
(EMW)
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