by Editor | Jun 27, 2021 | Publications
Ramu Damodaran, Chief of the United Nations Academic Impact
New York, May 26, 2021
I must have been in the eighth grade when our high school teacher, Father Pat Rebeiro, introduced us to the distinction between culture and civilization which the French author Amaury de Riencourt had put forward some years earlier, in which he expanded upon the idea put forward by Oswald Spengler earlier in The Decline of the West that, as Ben Espen has paraphrased it, “civilization is the “late” phase in a society’s life. It follows the period of “Culture,” when society creates its characteristic science, religion, art, and politics. “Espen goes on to suggest that “culture is pioneering, aesthetic, and fertile. Civilization is sterile, extensive, practical, and ethical.”
Riencourt wrote in the 1950s, shortly before Sputnik bridged our inner and outer worlds, and before the extraordinary demonstrations of a world resurgent, a world “pioneering, aesthetic and fertile” demonstrated the futility of demarcating cultures and civilizations by national or continental boundaries. Migration, the ease of collaborative research beyond the physical proximity of the researchers, and the unexpected fertility of foreign lands to greatnesses once thought indigenous to a specific national home, have allowed us a world whose civilizational moulding and moorings constantly yield a chorus, a confluence, and, indeed, a co-mingling, of cultures. Where, in this excitement and effervescence, does artificial intelligence (AI) fit in?
A good point to begin that reflection is the assertion by Governor Michael Dukakis of the character of AI, the absence of its applicability to the “too many judgments you have to make in this world that involve values, ethics and morality.” As bedrock principles, these would appear civilizational in character, the enduring geology which cultures infused but never supplanted, cultures which by the very being of their energy and spontaneity could well ignore, go beyond, reinvent —-or, yes, conform to —- values, ethics and morality. Speaking in Ho Chi Minh city (HCMH) two years ago, Ousmane Dione, World Bank Country Director for Vietnam, noted that while “ AI mimics how the brain works “, there were three key factors to measure the possibilities of its successful use in that historic city ; “setting clear and realistic expectations for where and how AI can deliver for HCMC, ensuring that there is an enabling environment for AI to succeed in practice, especially when it comes to accessing and integrating the data needed to solve the city’s challenges and, finally, making sure that we understand and manage any key risks associated with AI.”
Within the cultural space, the most self-evident area of risk posed by AI is, as Baptiste Caramiaux has written, in the challenge by “AI-generated content to authorship, ownership and copyright infringement. New exclusive rights on datasets must be designed in order to better incentivise innovation and research.” That said, as he continues, “AI challenges the creative value-chain in two ways: shifting services performed by humans to algorithms and empowering the individual creator.” It is that empowerment that will, in my view, remain one of the two greatest possibilities for AI to enhance the individual, as much as global, cultural experience.
In 2016, Microsoft, with academic and corporate partners, launched the “Next Rembrandt” project which “imprinted the AI “with 346 of Rembrandt’s known works in the hopes that it could create a unique 3D printed image in his style. An algorithm measured the distances between the facial features in Rembrandt’s paintings and calculated them based on percentages. Next, the features were transformed, rotated, and scaled, then accurately placed within the frame of the face. Finally, we rendered the light based on gathered data in order to cast authentic shadows on each feature.” The cumulative result was a product that could well have been the final work by the storied artist of the Renaissance.
Using that illustration as metaphor, one can foresee the power and possibilities in AI to create cultural experiences beyond ready human capacity, through its innate strengths of recognition, selection and assimilation, experiences that can extend to the creative and performing arts, the auditory aspiration of recreated music (think of Beethoven’s nine symphonies being fashioned into his unwritten tenth; we have a precursor already in the 2019 venture in Linz, where a performance of Mahler’s unfinished tenth symphony was followed by a six minute software composition in his style ), or a syncretic architectural fantasy that echoes Egyptian pyramids as evocatively as it does the Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Here AI is an enhancer of, and not a threat to, human enjoyment.
Corollary to this is the expansion the judicious use of AI will afford the culturally creative individual; even if its mimicking of the human brain will not allow it to become the brain itself, and happily not, it can through that process of inference and imitation address many of the more mundane aspects of the creativity while also suggesting options and possibilities for the original human brain to explore.
The cofounding by Governor Michael Dukakis and Nguyen Anh Tuan of the Boston Global Forum (BGF) of the “Artificial Intelligence World Society” (AIWS) launched “a project that aims to bring scientists, academics, government officials and industry leaders together to keep AI a benign force serving humanity’s best interests.” The idea of an AIWS would strike a particular chord for the United Nations which had looked at the idea of a “world society” in its very first years with UNESCO’s encouragement of “teaching about the United Nations and its specialized agencies since, together, these form the greatest contemporary effort, on an international, governmental scale, to move towards a world society. A booklet including some suggestions for teaching programs on the United Nations in the schools of Member States…was considered…at the UNESCO seminar at Adelphi College, New York.”
“World society” is an elegant phrase that has not acquired the reiteration it deserves; I was reminded of it when reading an article by Robert A. Scott, President Emeritus of Adelphi, where he writes “One of the most important goals of education is to learn how to reflect, how to learn from our experiences. An early experience that has stayed with me was finding small wooden signs along the paths of the camp I attended when nine years old. The signs were about three inches by seven inches and had the word “Others” carved into the wood. They were intended to inspire those walking the paths to be considerate of others, welcome others, and listen to others, no matter what their station in life. Others. Respect others. Listen to others, no matter what their station. Reflect on what they say. It may help solve a problem you never thought about.”
Those last four words point to the second possibility I sense in the power of AI to enhance the individual, to allow her the possibility to summon experiences untested and untasted from the moorings of the felt and familiar, to find in the ‘others’ that Bob Scott mentioned, ourselves. Much as the often irritating pop up advertisements that promise “if you like that you will love this”, AI can, with the voluntary consent of the online seeker, bring to the proximity of her desk or lap beauties unexplored with a confidence in their appeal that only objective algorithmical analysis can assure. And making distant cultures proximate, seeing their evanescent echoes in one’s own, is the essence of a world society.
The truth that such a society ought to be both a physical and a spiritual concept is reflected in what BGF describes as a “sophisticated pioneer model: a combination of the virtual, digital AIWS City and a real city”, the model being Phan Thiet in Viet Nam, developed by the Nova Group in that country whose Chairman, Bui Thanh Nhon, described it as “ the place for the World Leadership Alliance-Club de Madrid and the Michael Dukakis Institute to hold important annual events marked by the theme of ‘Building a New Economy’ for the world in the digital and artificial intelligence era, a venue to announce new achievements in the history of artificial intelligence and the digital economy.” It is critical to acknowledge the cultural dimension to the “new economy” through the creative sector, so much of its component cultural; as UNESCO notes, it generates “annual revenues of US$2,250 billion and global exports of over US$250 billion. According to recent forecasts, these sectors will represent around 10% of global GDP in the years to come.”
Speaking at the Riga Conference 2019 in Latvia, Tuan referred to the “need for a new social contract, one that is suited to a world of artificial intelligence, big data, and high-speed computation and that will protect the rights and interests of citizens individually and society generally. A fundamental assumption of the social contract is that the five centres of power – government, citizens, business firms, civil society organizations, and AI assistants – are interconnected and each needs to check and balance the power of the others. Citizens should have access to education pertaining to the use and impact of AI,” a thought reflective of what Governor Dukakis said at a BGF March event, of the possibilities of “new ideas, initiatives, and solutions by thinkers and creators in an effort to build a civilized, prosperous, peaceful, and happy world,” ‘creators’ an apt term to define those who say their skills and talent enhanced, and not threatened by, AI.
Forty years ago, Carl Sagan wrote: “What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
AI has taken that proof a step further, affirming in the process the linear connection between human capability and magic, affirming that magic would not find itself possible of realization without the humans that shaped it, extending inexorably and wondrously the pledge in the United Nations charter to the “dignity and worth of the human person” whose measure only the human person herself, through innovation, experiment and daring, can expand.
by Editor | Jun 20, 2021 | News
This plan is introduced in the book Remaking the World – The Age of Global Enlightenment:
Implementing the AIWS innovative ecosystem in society:
Based on AIWS innovative value system, building AIWS creative, innovative economic and political ecosystem for every citizen can create AIWS values and help exchange and trade AIWS value in social, include:
– Developing valuing criteria of AIWS creative, innovative contain 12 criteria of innovations.
– Building a AIWS Global Creative – Innovative Exchange Platform
– Building a AIWS Global Enlightenment Education System
– The State builds a strict and transparent legal system to protect creative, innovative values.
– The cultural and psychosocial environment supports and promotes innovation and compassion, tolerance, noble.
AIWS City as a Test Model:
Building AIWS City, a digital and virtual city as an experiment of the AIWS Global Innovation Ecosystem, including:
- AIWS value system: each citizen has an account as a digital house for creativity and exchange and trade their innovations.
- AIWS Global Innovation Exchange.
- AIWS University tests the innovative global citizenship education system AIWS
- AIWS City’s online advantage to create a stimulating environment for creativity and noble life includes theatres, concert auditoriums, museums, palaces, old towns, parks, and stadiums.
- Building innovative communities of AIWS City
by Editor | Jun 20, 2021 | News
Professor Joseph Nye, Member of BGF Board of Thinkers, contributed his ideas toward the book, below are some of his writings for the book:
“The moral issue is not whether you protect the national interest. It’s whether you define the national interest broadly enough so that what’s good for you is good for others as well. And that’s where I think we have failed in this current crisis.”
“We’re seeing a slight decline in economic globalization. That was already underway, but I think it will be increased by the effects of the pandemic. But the one thing we’re not seeing that many people predicted is the authoritarian model proving to be more powerful than the democratic model.”
by Editor | Jun 20, 2021 | News
Yasuhide Nakayama, a mentor of AIWS Innovation Network (AIWS.net), contributed toward the book:
“AI has become indispensable technology in various fields including in the manufacturing industry, and the medical, agriculture and the financial sectors, with the development of civilian technology. However, scientific developments can also present new challenges to national security. In many countries, the use of AI has led to the development of new military technologies, such as drone swarms and also renewed information warfare threats such as dissemination of fake news”
“As for AI ethics, the social principle of human-centric AI was developed as a guidance. It stipulates principles-related issues. A social principle of human-centric AI consists of seven principles, including human-centric principles that respect basic human rights guaranteed by domestic laws and international norms, and the principles of ensuring security which addresses security risks associated with elements of AI policy observatory of results obtained from AI operations”
“We believe that evaluations and the judgements on the use of AI will follow Japan’s social principle of human-centric AI and international norms as I mentioned. At that time, we are based on the social principles of human-centric AI. It is also necessary to consider that the systems need functions to detect and avoid unintended consequences and to shut down or suspend systems that have unintended behaviors.
“It’s necessary to have closed communications such as the exchange of information and shared awareness of issues related to the responsible use of AI among like-minded nations and international partners which share these values”
by Editor | Jun 20, 2021 | Event Updates
World leaders contributed content toward the book “Remaking the World – The Age of Global Enlightenment,” below are some of them in the backcover of the book:
“At the Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation, you are at the forefront of research and debate. And you definitely work on some of the world’s most pressing issues. You drive the discussion on digital policy and how a human-centric approach on AI could look like. This is an issue whose importance simply cannot be overestimated.”
“This is why the EU proposes to start work on a Transatlantic AI Agreement. We want to set a blueprint for regional and global standards aligned with our values: Human rights, and pluralism, inclusion and the protection of privacy. A transatlantic dialogue on the responsibility of online platforms!”
President of European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, December 12, 2020
“It is greatly reassuring to me that the members of the Boston Global Forum are promoting cybersecurity-related awareness raising activities and fostering discussions in various countries around the world.”
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, December 12, 2015
“Cybersecurity will also be crucial as we implement the recently adopted 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which will require us to tap into the potential of the data revolution and close today’s still-large digital divides.
On 15-16 December, the United Nations General Assembly will convene a High-level Meeting to review progress in the implementation of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society. Your discussion at this year’s Boston Global Forum can provide a timely contribution as we strive together to meet these challenges.”
Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, December 12, 2015
“Exploring a Social Contract for the AI Age – a framework to ensure an AI “Bill of Rights” in the digital age – is fundamental in international relations today.”
The Ambassador of the European Union to the United States, April 28, 2021
“Calling for members of World Leadership Alliance-Club de Madrid and world leaders to support, endorse and work for the implantation of the Social Contract for the AI Age. Among the central features of the Social Contract for the AI Age are the following:
First, it defines an international TCP/IP (the platform for communication among internet users), that is, a set of norms, values and standards specifically designed as connections among governments for enabling and supporting international relations – including between governments, between companies, between companies and governments.
Second, it is anchored principles of justice and equity, recognizing that communities must have control over their data, given that data literacy at all levels of society is the basis for an intelligent, thoughtful society.”
Club de Madrid, December 2020
by Editor | Jun 20, 2021 | News
Eva Kaili, MEP and Chair of European Parliament’s Science and Technology Options Assessment body (STOA) and Center for Artificial Intelligence, contributed toward the discussion at the AI International Accord Committee:
The datafication of our societies, via the deployment of AI technologies, is transforming the world as we know it and has the power to challenge and dismantle the fundamentals of our democracy. The ongoing technological change far from being deterministic in its nature and effects, needs to be managed in a proactive and people-centric manner. A new social contract is needed to ensure that any multilateral attempt to shape an AI governance framework is inclusive, trustworthy and will enable the net benefits of digital automation and autonomy to be realized and more widely shared. The European Union as an example of a supranational social contract, can serve as a source of policy inspiration for framing a sustainable, democratic and fair AI. With its new AI Act, just like it did with the ambitious GDPR, Europe is setting high standards to protect digital human rights by default, citizens privacy and consumers safety, prohibiting mass surveillance, intrusive monitoring and social scoring practices that could increase inequalities, in aspiration that our democratic ethical principles could be the basis of an international accord on AI.
by Editor | Jun 13, 2021 | News
To help citizens have equality of opportunity in education, as well as bringing basic knowledge, encouraging and inspiring foundations for innovations, and supporting in creating values for others and societies, AIWS City created the AIWS Global Enlightenment Program.
The AIWS Global Enlightenment is based on the global citizenship education concepts of UNESCO, with additions from new ideas and concepts in the AI Age. Professor Thomas Patterson, Harvard University, is the director of this special program.
This program is a part of the AIWS Economic-Political Ecosystem.
The AIWS Global Enlightenment Program invite thinkers and leaders to contribute for this program.
by Editor | Jun 13, 2021 | News
Mr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, CEO of the Boston Global Forum, presented AIWS City, AIWS Values, and the United Nations Centennial Initiative at the Horais Global Meeting on June 8, 2021 on the Panel “Envisioning Post-pandemic Smart Cities.”
Here are his key messages:
The AIWS innovative economic-political ecosystem is an ecosystem which encourages and helps all citizens to optimize their creativity and capacity development together to build up standards of values and living culture, a good humanistic living environment with kindness and truthfulness from which honest and kind visionaries, who can contribute to creating new thinking and new culture, can be recognized and have fulfilling lives both materially and spiritually, and have the opportunities to become governmental and social leaders. The AIWS Ecosystem is the Boston Global Forum’s tribute to the United Nations Centennial Initiative.
AIWS Creative Value System
Noble creative values, valued in the following order:
- To create and develop innovative organizations, ideas, and socio-political theories, which are meaningful, legal, logical, and could produce new paths for social development
- To guide organizations to implement socio-political initiatives.
- To create technology that better the life of people.
- To innovate arts and sports to improve the quality of life.
- To volunteer to help people and contribute data, information, and values as well as engage in charitable activities to building a better society according to the Social Contract for the Age of Artificial Intelligence standards.
Building AIWS City, a digital and virtual city as an experiment of the AIWS Global Innovation Ecosystem, including:
- AIWS value system: each citizen has an account as a digital house for creativity and exchange and trade their innovations.
- AIWS Global Creative Exchange.
Moderator: Sergio Fernandez de Cordova Executive Chairman, P3 Smart City Partners & PVBLIC Foundation
Panelists:
- Janice Kovach, President, NJ League of Municipalities; Mayor of Clinton NJ, USA
- Arun Amirtham, Chairman, 5 Elements Sustainable Development Group, Switzerland
- Tony Cho, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Future of Cities, USA
- Joe Landon, Vice President, Lockheed Martin, USA
- Nguyen Anh Tuan, Chief Executive Officer, Boston Global Forum, USA
by Editor | Jun 13, 2021 | News
Advanced software and cyber-physical systems, so called ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) systems, and data driven business models increasingly govern portions of our lives: they influence how we work, love, buy, sell, communicate, meet, and navigate. They impact individual rights, social interactions, the economy, and politics. They pose new risks to national security, democratic institutions, individual dignity and human wellbeing.
Yet, citizens and their elected, accountable representatives still lack the institutional means to govern these technologies and to hold their developers and providers accountable. The ubiquitous, pervasive, and invasive, providers of these technologies have used their concentrated economic power to shield themselves from meaningful independent oversight. They work with unique power dynamics, including the ‘winners take all’ effects and a race for a limited pool of talent. Digitization has led to the emergence of what we call hereafter private corporate hegemony. The challenges to both individual rights and democratic institutions by the power they wield include unaccountable governance of communication (controlling who and what gets heard in the public square), spreading mis- and dis-information, mass surveillance, and cyber-vulnerabilities and threats. Meeting these challenges requires more than just incremental legal adjustments on both sides of the Atlantic.
Governments worldwide desire to reap the economic benefits of technologies provided by the hegemon, while at the same time aiming to constrain their power. A fundamental mismatch exists, however, between the pace at which innovative yet destabilizing digital applications can be deployed and the pace, as well as rigor, with which norms, standards and regulations are put in place. To complicate matters, traditional narratives around competition, security, and unfettered innovation undermine the adoption of proper constraints. This creates unhealthy degrees of freedom for hegemony that drive a trajectory of the digital and technological revolution toward unprecedented forms of surveillance capitalism and strategic instability. Governments, stakeholders and citizens on both sides of the Atlantic have therefore rightfully expressed concern that this situation will continue to fragment the societies for which they hold responsibility, weaken democracy and the rule of law, as well as compromise fundamental human and constitutional rights.
In light of these challenges, we have come together in an interdisciplinary Transatlantic Reflection Group on Democracy and the Rule of Law in the Age of “Artificial Intelligence” to address the systemic challenges to democracy emanating from monopolies and centralised governance of AI. We believe democracy and the rule of law themselves are at stake and we share reflections on the principles that should govern how these challenges are to be addressed.
Technological solutionism should not replace democracy
Without historic, radical reform, citizens and their elected representatives will be disempowered and lose the means for effective self-governance. The promise of future technologies delivering economic growth cannot justify today’s erosion of democratic norms, fundamental rights, and the rule of law. Neither should the vulnerability and monopolization of digitized systems jeopardize the peaceful cooperation of states. Unregulated technological deployment will exacerbate inequalities and undermine trust. The short-term benefits could be far outweighed by longer-term risks and undesirable societal as well as political consequences.
The challenges to institutions, laws, and democratic processes – combined with the litany of claims that unregulated business interests can better address global challenges than democracy – have weakened trust in democracy and played into the hands of authoritarianism.
In this situation, there is a need to reaffirm that democratically established laws, by democratically elected and accountable representatives, are the noble and legitimate expressions of the people. To preserve these fundamental principles, radical reform is needed.
Affirming the primacy of democracy
AI cuts to the heart of how we live. Decisions on how to govern such systems, their data and process oversight must not be decided by economic players who continue to overwhelm policy makers with demands to be either left alone or given special treatment.
Rather than stand by as witnesses to the erosion of democracy, we call for policy processes that empower citizens and guarantee vibrant, reflective, and free societies, where citizens and regions can have true influence. Our societies must be based on horizontal and vertical divisions of power, and improved checks and balances to safeguard against monopolistic concentration and abuse, such as the abuse of democracy through regulatory capture.
The rules must go beyond technology-specific regulation, or the regulation of business practices. Like the technological and economic developments they are intended to address, they, by their nature, will influence how humans interact with each other and with their civic institutions, how democracy and markets function and how people live. Done well, however, they will ensure the rule of law curtails overreaches of power, by private or governmental actors.
These laws must serve the public interest and in doing so they may well be asymmetrical by creating stronger obligations that bind the big and powerful. To ensure that citizens are democratically empowered and can trust the legislative process at the local, national, and supranational level, it is important that the law-making be accessible, clear and transparent and that the laws are not only enacted but also enforced.
Empowering citizens through institutions of countervailing power
Democracies must foster and strengthen countervailing powers and the type of checks and balances necessary to control power in the age of AI. Countervailing powers can arise from scalable new technologies and business models on the one hand, and from effective and enforceable legislation on the other. Democracy must preserve space for both.
As a starting point, democracies must protect individuals and political systems from both governmental and non-governmental abuses of power facilitated by the targeted use of predictive technologies and personal data collection. Democracies must also prevent the weakening of local entrepreneurial activity through killer acquisitions and other anti-competitive behaviours.
Citizens and their elected representatives will be capable of responding to the challenges posed by the new technologies and new economic dynamics only if they are equipped with sound information about the real effectiveness and impact of the technologies. To that end, policymakers should address the need for an evidence-based public policy dialogue and to empower citizens and civil society to meaningfully participate. They should also encourage US-European cooperation in the development of AI benchmarking protocols in order to promote values-driven, evidence-based policy cooperation.
Where massive computing systems can effectively regulate human behaviour or dictate government behaviour, it is important that our societies preserve and strengthen the democratic accountability of policy actors and demand that those actors defend the public interest and work together to develop policies to avoid capture by private economic interests. Governments and legislators must equip themselves with their own, state of the art science and technology impact assessment capabilities and share the results of any such assessments with the public. That should help to empower citizens and make them and their representatives less dependent on the sometimes incomplete or false information provided by corporations on technological capabilities, risks, and solutions.
Countervailing power can also come from governmental authorities (e.g., consumer protection, data protection, or competition authorities), non-governmental civic institutions (e.g., unions, non-governmental organisations, civil society, academia, and the free press), and citizens themselves. That power can be effectively exercised, however, only if steps are taken to ensure that providers of technological products and services are held democratically accountable, that mechanisms exist for citizens to assert their basic human and civil rights against economically more powerful actors, and that the public is well informed about both the benefits and the risks presented by the emerging technologies and business models.
Universities, media, and civil society should be empowered to renew and strengthen their commitment to supporting the exercise of reason, inquiry for truth and informed opinion. The freedom of academics and civil society to criticize state and corporate conduct must be protected.
Building bridges between technologists and policy communities
Independent technology experts are needed as participants in reliably inclusive democratic processes protected from private economic interests. While the number and importance of scientists and engineers in our societies has increased, their participation in public policy and formal democratic fora, such as parliaments, has declined. On the one hand, engineers and scientists should engage more in formal democratic decision-making institutions, on the other hand political and democratic actors and institutions must build bridges for meaningful and visible engagement. Independent experts informing, training and collaborating with policy and decision makers must fill gaps in how governments understand technology and familiarise technologists and scientists with the specificities and complexity of decision-making in participatory democracies.
A broad array of perspectives are needed to formulate effective measures for understanding and mitigating the risks posed by advanced technologies. The role of technology as part of the proper functioning of our democracies should be informed by diverse and multidisciplinary stakeholders, from philosophers, youth representatives and labour unions to the impacted communities themselves.
Joining forces: Jointly defending democracy across the Atlantic
The survival of democracy on both sides of the Atlantic requires that American and European governments demonstrate their ability to act decisively and deliver efficiently in the face of great challenges. Without claiming perfection as to their democratic practices, public authorities and legislators in Europe and the Americas should join forces to support a new upward dynamic in order to develop effective legislative frameworks to address the challenges outlined here. It may be only through such a cooperation and partnership that they are able to acquire the strength and reach needed to protect and empower the individual and defend democratic values against the hegemonial power of tech corporations.
With coherence across European and transatlantic jurisdictions, laws will have greater scale and will be more effective at addressing these challenges. Societies need not suffer from a competitive race to the bottom on standards for public life and protection of fundamental rights caused by free riding, forum shopping, and the exploitation of international tensions.
The fast pace of technological innovation and the economic success of the platform economy must not slow or erode the democratic process nor disempower individual human beings. While public institutions will need to reform to remain at the forefront of emerging technologies, this will be of little use if basic principles of self-governance are not maintained and protected through appropriate regulatory mechanisms and rigorously enforced.
Democratic deliberation to develop consensus, as well as the human ability to re-interpret legal norms in consideration of new technologies and new economic conditions are strengths, not weaknesses. A stable legal environment is crucial for accountability and certainty: while there is no doubt that legislation must evolve over time, democratic lawmakers should not be expected to publish and amend laws as frequently as software developers code, nor would this make for good law.
Technology regulation must not focus narrowly on zeitgeist trends. In contrast, technology-neutral laws, which are drafted in open language and without reliance on buzzwords, enable re-interpretation and will remain relevant as technologies and business models evolve. They must start with core values and principles and focus on what is needed to protect and advance those values and principles. The process of filling in the details should be left to delegated legislation, transparent standard setting processes, and bodies responsible for enforcement.
We ask that US and European leadership remain committed to coherent laws, the primacy of the public interest, and the shaping of the digital economy through democracy on both sides of the Atlantic. We call on decision makers to remember the crucial importance of transatlantic coherence for reasons of both transatlantic democratic accountability and the rapidly advancing global competition. What is needed now are well-designed legal frameworks and strong institutions, which empower and enfranchise citizens and serve the common interest of people in Europe, the US, and beyond, and ensure:
FAIR COMPETITION AND TAXATION
- Competition law: Review competition rules to enable antitrust authorities to better pre-empt and tackle anti -competitive behaviour, including acquisitions of emerging competitors and the appropriation of innovative ideas by dominant incumbents, while reducing barriers to entry. Explore transatlantic regulatory cooperation to overcome the territorial market segmentation that ultimately favours transnationally operating digital corporations.
- Upskilling of supervisory authorities: Give supervisory authorities the mandate, skills and resources needed to understand, oversee, and address how AI affects their respective domains.
- Address tax ‘free riding’: Ensure that those who benefit from the digital economy the most contribute financially to sustain core functions of democracy and public infrastructure, and pay for the undesirable societal impact of their technologies, through taxes where profit is generated.
DATA GOVERNANCE
- Data quality: Ensure that data used to train AI systems with potentially major impacts, is governed by legal frameworks that incorporate proper quality requirements, including reliability of testing and verification.
- Behavioural and biometric data: Ensure that behavioural and biometric data does not serve the training of AI systems capable of manipulation, discrimination and disinformation, in particular with regard to biometric profiling and emotion recognition technologies
- Data access: Ensure access to and use of data which is in the public interest, provided this does not interfere with human rights. Such access should also be ensured between services, especially when data and computation capabilities are held by companies, which calls for private and public open data policies and protocols that support interoperability as well as data portability.
- Transatlantic data flows: Create conditions of trust enabling transatlantic data flows based on the fundamental rights to data protection and privacy; create mechanisms of mutual protection and respect firmly grounded in ‘effective and practical protection’ within the relevant jurisdictions.
FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS
- Human rights and dignity: Establish practical and effective protection of human rights and liberties such as human dignity, non-discrimination, the presumption of innocence, due process, and the protection of children’s rights
- AI Safety: Put in place regulatory frameworks promoting AI governance, transparency, robustness, and cybersecurity, update legislation to tackle unacceptable cases of algorithmic discrimination and limit corporations’ ability to escape liability for their AI systems.
- Transparency and access: Supervisory authorities need access to government and corporate infrastructure, processes, and ecosystems, including algorithms and databases, and policies, to ensure adequate oversight and accountability. This should not be prohibited in the name of either government or corporate secrecy.
INDEPENDENCE AND HUMAN AGENCY
- Free press and academia: Provide a framework for a vibrant, independent press and funding to foster independent academic and civil society organisations and empower them to scrutinise and investigate the impacts, abuses, and misuses of emerging technologies.
- Values-based technology design: Ensure all types of processes that include automated decision making and AI operate according to principles of responsibility and accountability, transparency, explainability, respect for human dignity and meaningful control. These values, the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights must be protected by design throughout the life cycle of the advanced software and cyber-physical systems.
- Evidence-based decision-making and assessment: Address the need for the public policy dialogue to be evidence-based and for citizens and civil society to be empowered to participate meaningfully in this dialogue. Establish regular open AI benchmarks intended to soundly assess and report on the extent to which AI-enabled systems comply with the values set out above. Encourage the US, Europe, and other interested parties to cooperate in the development of any such benchmarking protocols.
NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
- Risk monitoring and mitigation: Ensure that emerging technologies, including those developed in the private sector, do not undermine national security or international peace in unforeseen ways. Such risks must be continuously monitored by supervisory authorities and addressed in an anticipatory manner.
- National security: Ensure public oversight over AI systems to keep them safe and secure. Identify mechanisms and instruments to better integrate safety, security and economic considerations in regulatory policy.
- AI in the military: Leverage towards a comprehensive treaty based mechanism on the use of autonomous decision-making systems and AI; especially for military purposes.
- Fighting digital authoritarianism: Scale multilateral engagement on technical norms and standards to defend against digital authoritarianism and provide positive alternatives to authoritarian digital and physical entanglements by supporting bottom-up, self-determined digital development strategies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND SIGNATORIES
Contributors participated in their personal capacity. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers or organisations they might be associated with. The signatories support the general gist of the statement, without necessarily agreeing to the details of every formulation.
CONTRIBUTORS to the Reflection Group on Democracy and the Rule of Law in the Age of “Artificial Intelligence” are, in alphabetical order:
Cathryn Culver Ashbrook, Nicolas Economou, Dr. Bruce Hedin, Dr. Mireille Hildebrandt, Dr. Konstantinos Karachalios, Anja Kaspersen, Paul Nemitz, Tuan Anh Nguyen, Marietje Schaake, Dr. Sarah Spiekermann, Alex Stamos, Dr. Thomas Streinz, Wendell Wallach
SIGNATRORIES
Dr. Greg Adamson
Honorary, Computing and Information Systems
The University of Melbourne
Nicolas Economou
Chief Executive Officer, H5
Chair, Law Committee, IEEE Global Initiative on the Ethics of A/I Systems
Chair, Law, Science, and Society Initiative, The Future Society
Principal Coordinator, The Athens Roundtable on AI and the Rule of Law
Dr. Bruce Hedin
Principal Scientist, H5
Dr. Mireille Hildebrandt
Co-Director, PI ERC ADG COHUBICOL; Co-Editor in Chief CRCL
Radboud University, Nijmegen
Senior researcher to Law Science Technology and Society (LSTS)
Vrije Universiteit Brussels
Dr. Konstantinos Karachalios
Managing Director, IEEE-SA
Member, IEEE Management Council
Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE
Member of the U.K. House of Lords
Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee
Commissioner, UNESCO’s Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development
Member, UNESCO Working Group on Child Online Safety
Nicolas Miailhe
Founder & President, The Future Society
Paul Nemitz
Principal Adviser on Justice Policy in the European Commission and visiting Professor of Law at the College of Europe
Tuan Anh Nguyen
CEO of Boston Global Forum
Executive Director of Michael Dukakis Institute
Co-founder of AI World Society
Marietje Schaake
International Policy Director at the Cyber Policy Center
International Policy Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Stanford University
Former Member of European Parliament
Dr. Sarah Spiekermann
Chair, Institute for Information Systems & Society
Vienna University of Economics and Business
Alex Stamos
Director, Stanford Internet Observatory
Stanford University
Former chief security officer (CSO) at Facebook
Dr. Thomas Streinz
Adjunct Professor of Law
New York University School of Law
Wendell Wallach
Chair, Technology and Ethics Research Group
Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics
