The United Nations has established a global advisory committee focused on the governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Launched by the UN Secretary-general Antonio Guterres, the AI advisory body held its first meeting on the 27th of October, which brought together experts from national governments, the private sector (including OpenAI’s CTO), researchers, and civil society to establish an interdisciplinary taskforce.
Speaking on the launch of an advisory body, António Guterres said that the council was necessary to mitigate and diminish the risk of AI and make it beneficial to humanity.
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In his words,
“For developing economies, Al offers the possibility of leapfrogging outdated technologies and bringing services directly to people who need them most. The transformative potential of AI for good is difficult even to grasp.
“And without entering into a host of doomsday scenarios, it is already clear that the malicious use of AI could undermine trust in institutions, weaken social cohesion, and threaten democracy itself. For all these reasons, I have called for a global, multidisciplinary multistakeholder conversation on the governance of Al so that its benefits to humanity are maximized, and the risks contained and diminished.”
The UN has an opportunity to set globally agreed-upon rules of the road for monitoring and regulating AI. Just as the UN in July this year convened similar bodies to manage the use of AI for nuclear weapons, it has a unique role to play in coordinating the international response to AI.
It would be recalled that earlier this year the Center for AI Safety based in San Francisco released a statement saying that mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as nuclear war.
The statement was accompanied by signatories from some of the world’s leading AI companies which include Google’s DeepMind, Anthropic, ChatGPT developer open-AI, and several others, urging for the regulation of the AI sector while it is still in its early stages, to prevent it from wreaking havoc in future.
OpenAI CEO and maker of ChatGPT, Sam Altman said while speaking in a US Congress in May this year, said it is essential to develop regulations that incentivize AI safety while ensuring that people can access the technology’s many benefits. He further stated that it is essential that a technology as powerful as AI is developed with democratic values in mind.
Several other experts have stated that AI models should be mandated to pass certain safety tests, such as whether they could self-replicate and exfiltrate into the wild.
Notably, International governments are increasingly recognising the importance of regulating artificial intelligence (AI) to address the potential risks and ethical concerns associated with its rapid development.
In response to the recent rise of AI technologies, countries are collaborating to create comprehensive legal frameworks that prioritize safety and privacy as the topmost considerations.
With the launch of an International Advisory Council Centered on The Governance of AI, the EU is closer to fully implementing an AI act that aims to ensure AI systems are safe, unbiased, and transparent and that the rights of people will be protected as the technology advances.