I would like to warmly compliment Prof. Choucri for a masterly compilation of a concise, and yet comprehensive, paper outlining the elements of an AIIA, capturing the intricacies of the issues involved and appreciating the breadth of the challenges.
She makes the absolutely valid point that transformation of AI innovations and applications are moving ahead of our collective ability to fully appreciate the opportunities and threats that they generate. It is an equally valid point that, while countries are developing their own AI policies (at different levels of sophistication), there has been very little realization of the urgent need for an international regime that promotes cooperation on AI applications for human progress and mitigating their destructive potential.
I am almost entirely in agreement with the deliverables she has identified and the methodology of approach to them. What I will add here are comments on some of the aspects covered in the draft.
The need for inclusiveness in this international accord merits particular emphasis. The borderless nature of AI tools means that those excluded would have no incentive not to use them to the detriment of others. The need to maximize the number inside the tent is obvious.
It follows from this that we should not limit AIIA to democracies. In any case, there are too many “models” of democracy these days and variances even within each. The important criterion should be the willingness to abide by agreed norms; not the system of governance. Vietnam, for example, is not called a democracy, but is a disciplined member of the international community, abiding by international law. Exclusion of Vietnam and countries like it, on the grounds of their domestic system of governance, would be counterproductive.
The draft rightly assigns to national authorities the discretion to determine the manner of AI governance within their countries, while requiring them to abide by the discipline of the international accord. This is wise. As we see today, even among democracies, there are different practices and different interpretations of the ethics of reconciling the conflicting interests of human rights, law enforcement and preventive security measures. The balance that each country will find would depend on its historical experiences, social consciousness and threat perceptions. Prescriptive provisions threaten disruption of the international accord.
A cautionary note on sanctions that are envisaged to enforce adherence to the Accord. Recent experience of unilateral primary and secondary sanctions underlines the need for carefully defining the scope and applicability of sanctions, identifying clearly the objective conditions which would trigger the sanctions, and the methodology of applying and lifting the sanctions.
The draft makes the important point of variances in the levels of AI-capability across the world and the need for capacity-building. We need to be conscious of the dangers of a new digital divide, which would widen global social and economic inequalities, with consequent threats to peace and security.
This lab is a transatlantic dialog between leaders, policymakers, decision makers, business leaders, and distinguished thinkers of the EU, the US, Japan, Australia on AI Regulations of the EU and the Framework for AI International Accord.
There will also be a discussion on the Book “Remaking the world – The Age of the Global Enlightenment” by distinguished leaders and thinkers.
Partnership of the Boston Global Forum, Club de Madrid will seek to contribute to global consensus-building around a rights-based agenda for the governance of AI and digital societies as a part of AI World Society model (AIWS).
The total effect of AI and digital technologies on our societies is far greater than the sum of its parts. As AI and digital technologies revolutionize every facet of modern societies, they also alter how the different social component relate to one another, thereby making our existing social contract obsolete. Applying Social Contract for the Digital and AI Age requires, first and foremost, thoughtful consideration of how the multi-fold transformation driven by AI and digital technologies is affecting fundamental rights in AI and digital societies.
The China question: Beijing supports banning the use of these weapons, but not their development or production. The U.S. and NATO have argued that they need to keep autonomous lethal weapons in their arsenals as deterrence and defense against “malign” actors — all very reminiscent of the Cold War and nuclear politics.
Van Weel, the assistant secretary-general, said: “China has a seamless flow of these new technologies from the private sector into the defense realm. I’m … not sure that they’re having the same debates on principles of responsible use or they’re definitely not applying our democratic values to these technologies.”
Coyle doesn’t trust Beijing either, calling it an “insincere partner in many of their multilateral agreements.”
The article was original published at Politico EU.
The Boston Global Forum and World Leadership Alliance-Club de Madrid are collaborating in building the Framework for AI International Accord (AIIA) and AIIA Policy Lab, which will be organized on June 22-24, 2021.
On May 6, 2021, Mr. Anders Hjorth Agerskov, Lead Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank Group, presented “Future of Taxation” at the United Nations Centennial Roundtable:
Tax administrations will become “invisible” – as data is captured seamlessly in real time
Data transfer from accounting systems will be automated through an Application Programming Interface and tax information will increasingly be embedded in blockchain enabled smart contracts, requiring no or minimal human intervention.
AI driven robotic decision-making will increase – but risks need to be managed!
Decisions within the tax administration are being automated. Such efforts will initially be based on Robotic Process Automation and later on more advanced algorithmic decision-making made possible by robust and federated Artificial Intelligence solutions and expert systems incorporating tax and case law.
Data and digital solutions will allow for a new generation of taxpayer services and experiences These may include prefilled tax returns, taxpayers’ access to their own filing information, taxpayers’ sharing of data with banks to expedite credit approvals, and privacy preserving queries on the tax file by researchers and local communities. The touchpoints will be personalized rather than developed solely from the perspective of the tax administration’s internal procedures. The focus will be on promoting user adoption and building trust.
Tax administrations’ mandate will expand – they could become governments’ data warehouse That means providing economic data for monitoring the economy; verifying compliance under social, (COVID-19 related) stimulus, and other programs; supporting the modelling of economic policy across agencies; and promoting transparency.
Ecosystem and stakeholder management will come to the fore
This is due to the increasing importance of collaboration with tech firms and tax advisers to build interfaces to the taxation system and through a shift in the deployment of resources from operations to systems design and maintenance.
The United Nations Centennial Roundtable was hosted by AIWS Innovations at AIWS City on May 8, 2021.
We introduce part of the acceptance speech by the European Union Ambassador to the US Lambrinidis for the World Leader in AI World Society Award on April 28:
In Europe, we believe that there is a clear interrelation between Innovation and Fundamental Rights – that one can promote the other.
We value, champion, and thrive from innovation. Last year, as the deadly COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly across the globe, AI demonstrated its potential to aid humanity by helping to predict the geographical spread of the disease, diagnose the infection through computed tomography scans, and develop the first vaccines and drugs against the virus.
European companies and innovators have been at the forefront in every aspect of that effort. The winner of last year’s Future Unicorn Award, presented annually by the European Union to start-ups with the greatest potential, was awarded to a Danish company, Corti, which uses AI and voice recognition to help doctors predict heart attacks.
Clearly, the possibilities and opportunities for AI are immense – from turning on wind turbines to produce the clean energy for our green transition, to detecting cyber-attacks faster than any human being, or cancer in mammograms earlier and more reliably than trained doctors. We hope that AI will even help us to detect the next infectious outbreak, before it becomes a deadly pandemic.
We want AI to do all of these great things.
At the same time, just as in every technological evolution that has come before it, we must prepare for the unexpected. With the increasing adoption of AI, our rights to privacy, dignity, freedom, equality, and justice are all at stake. These are fundamental to our lives as Europeans, and enshrined in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.
If it is our aspiration to create machines that are able to do more and more of our thinking, selections and decision-making, we must also take care to ensure they do not make the same mistakes that we humans have been prone to make. Let me offer two examples to illustrate the point:
First – the use of facial, voice, and movement recognition systems in public places can help make our lives more secure. However, it can also allow governments to engage in mass surveillance, intimidation, and repression, as China has shown, in the most cynical and calculated way, in Xingiang.
Second – the use of AI in recruitment decisions can be helpful. However, if a computer compares resumes of senior managers and concludes that being male is a good predictor of success, the data simply reflects bias – a bias within our society, which historically has favored men for leadership positions. We do not want AI to reinforce existing biases by copying and infinitely replicating them.
These are just two examples that illustrate why we must not become bystanders to the development and deployment of AI. If we, the major world democracies, do not move to establish a regulatory framework, if we do not move fast, smart and strategically to build alliances and set standards for human-centric, trustworthy, and human rights-respecting AI with countries big and small from all over the world, I dread to think who might.
At the AI International Accord Roundtable April 28, 2021, Mr. Magnus Magnusson, Director for Partnerships and Outreach, UNESCO, presented “Bring Goodness and AI Ethics to AI International Accord, and view from UNESCO”. He raised “Diversity must be integrated in every single step of the AI lifecycle; from creation of algorithms to the collection of data, down to the numerous applications of AI in every aspect in today’s society: healthcare, education, transportation and so forth. This is the only way to ensure all voices will contribute to the development towards policies and frameworks for AI”.
The plethora of government tax, fiscal, and trade digital transformation initiatives are each occurring within a single country domain. A preliminary analysis of this growing digital transformation demand reveals multi-country interest in key tax, fiscal, and trade technology initiatives, including digital identification, multi-party data sharing, e-invoicing, distributed systems (e.g., blockchain) applied to global trade, and artificial intelligence / data systems to improve governmental decision-making. Absent intervention, these initiatives will continue as single-country initiatives, duplicative technology solutions will be developed, and intergovernmental technology interoperability will be sub-optimized.
Our idea is for The Prosperity Collaborative to lead an effort to convert certain aspects of this global digital demand to DPGs immediately available to multiple jurisdictions, playing a key leadership role in advancing DPGs for tax, fiscal, and trade systems within governments, as a practical solution for the Concept of AI-Government, conceived by Boston Global Forum and Michael Dukakis Institute. Our Collaborative builds and leads a multi-stakeholder consortium focused on developing and advancing DPGs in this important space. We could call this new organization the Digital Tax and Trade Consortium (DTTC). This new multi-stakeholder DTTC would be comprised of multilaterals, anchored by The World Bank, and ideally including the UN, OECD, ADB, etc.; fintech providers, World Economic Forum, technologists (principally, Microsoft), philanthropists, and leading policymakers.
Chair/Moderator: Mr. Ramu Damodaran, Chief Academic Impact of the United Nations. Keynote speaker: Professor Alex Sandy Pentland, MIT
Panelists:
Dr. Tomicah Tillemann, Executive Director of the Digital Impact and Governance Initiative (DIGI) at New America
Mr. Jeff Saviano, EY Global Tax Innovation Leader
Mr. Anders Hjorth Agerskov, Lead Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank Group
Is it right, and this will be my last and third remark, to take the multilateral agreement on the Law of the Sea, which is a United Nations Agreement, as a model for our work on AI? The multilateral agreement on the Law of the Sea is the biggest binding convention of the United Nations. And I would say, having in mind the ambition to have as many countries on board as possible as a precondition for a global AI accord working, I think that makes the Law of the Sea a great model.
Second, the Law of the Sea at the time was extremely innovative in dealing with a space which was largely unexplored, out there beyond the sight of the coast, 70% of the space of the world and so deep at certain places that no men had ever seen the bottom of what was being regulated in binding international law. This was exactly the reason that states got together and agreed on, if you look at them today, amazing principles of a binding nature because everyone understood that this new frontier, the ocean being at the beginning of exploitation, deep sea mining and other forms of economic and scientific activity, needs common rules to avoid conflicts in the future.
And the United Nations and states went very far on this. They even set up a court and a dispute settlement system which today works fairly well.
So, I think we should have our ambitions high, go beyond just repeating non-binding types of principles which we already find in the OECD code and in many ethic codes, focus on the specific nature of AI as a technology which provides us with the opportunity to set out principles on which agreement is possible, and we should aim for binding rules because we are dealing with power relations here and a matter of greatest importance both for states as well as natural persons.
How are AI and data systems evolving? What is the future of digital Government, Commerce, and Citizen Services? Broad technology trends and urgent needs are shaping how digital technology is developing and being deployed.
The United Nations Centennial Roundtable “Digital Future toward The Age of Global Enlightenment” will answer these questions and present solutions to them. AIWS Innovations at AIWS City and the United Nations Academic Impact are co-organizing this roundtable.
Keynote speaker: Professor Alex Sandy Pentland, MIT, Member of AIWS City’s Board of Leaders
Panelists:
Dr. Tomicah Tillemann, Executive Director of the Digital Impact and Governance Initiative (DIGI) at New America
Mr. Jeff Saviano, EY Global Tax Innovation Leader
Mr. Anders Hjorth Agerskov,Lead Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank Group
Moderator: Mr. Ramu Damodaran, Chief Academic Impact of the United Nations.
