by Editor | Jun 27, 2021 | News
Nazli Choucri, Professor of Political Science (MIT) and co-author of Social Contract for the AI Age, contributes to the book Remaking the world – The Age of Global Enlightenment.
She wrote about the Framework for AI International Accord; some notes are here below:
Consistent with the principles the provisions of the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime as well as the EU General Directives, and respecting the Social Contract for the AI Age, the AIIA draft framework is conceived and designed as: 10
- A multi-stakeholder, consensus-based international agreement to establish common policy and practice in development, use, implementation and applications of AI
- Anchored in the balance of influence and responsibility among governments, businesses, civil society, individuals, and other entities.
- Respectful of national authority and international commitments and requires assurances of rights and responsibilities for all participants and decision-entities.
To consolidate the design into a formal International Accord, it is essential to:
- Review legal frameworks for AI at various levels of aggregation to identify elements essential for an international AI legal framework.
- Recognize methods to prevent abuses by governments and businesses in uses of AI, Data, Digital Technology, and Cyberspace (including attacks on companies, organizations, and individuals, and other venues of the Internet)
- Consolidate working norms to manage all aspects of AI innovations, and
- Construct and enable response-systems for violations of rights and responsibilities associated with the development, design, applications, or implementation of AI
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 | 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
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
Moving into a new age of technological advancements brings promising potential to world society as Artificial Intelligence becomes a public good used to promote the better well-being of all people. But alongside the opportunities Artificial Intelligence and other technologies have to offer, we also face a threat from private and public entities who aim to exploit the use of these advancements abusing the rights of individuals and the rule of law. AI technologies raise concerns about security, privacy, and fairness in a democratic society.
This phenomenon is not just something we envision in the coming future, but already a practice today both in the public and private sphere.
In order to protect the rights, privacy, and security of all people, a monitoring system must be implemented to supervise actions that violate the rights and security of individuals in democratic values and keep abusers accountable for their actions. A monitor system is of great importance to create a safe environment where there is trust that private and public entities do not take control of personal data through the use of AI for their own means.
Those that misuse their power must face the penalties that come with non-compliance to the norms, standards, common values, and international laws as outlined in the Social Contract for the AI Age and Artificial Intelligence International Accords (AIIA).
Already, Freedom House and other organizations are in place to monitor policies and behaviors in other spheres, but they lack formal authority. The Michael Dukakis Institute can provide a monitoring system to the best of its ability, they must be well structured, staffed, and funded to ensure legitimacy and authority on their assessments and judgments.
The time to implement and support a monitoring system is now as entities already have the capability to infringe on the lives of millions in the world. The cooperation of governments, big corporations, and civil society is of most importance in this time of evolving advancements. Through the implementation of a monitoring system, we can ensure that fundamental human rights, the rule of law, and Social Contract for the AI Age, AI International Accord will be protected in the international community.
by Editor | Jun 3, 2021 | News
Professor Thomas Patterson, Harvard Kennedy School, President of AIWS University wrote one of the many chapters in the book “Remaking the World – the Age of Global Enlightenment”. Here are some sections from his writing:
“Such concerns lead us to conclude that there is a need for a new social contract, one fitted to the AI age and that seeks to maximize the benefits of AI and minimize its exploitation. Without such guidelines, AI entails significant risks to the wellbeing of individuals and nations.
By definition, a social contract is based on the rights and interests of individuals, and what governments and other entities must do and are prohibited from doing to safeguard those rights and interests. Social contract theory begins with the assumption that the power arrangement that individuals would willingly accept is one where they do not know in advance their position in society, whether they will be among its advantaged or disadvantaged members. Reasoning from that assumption, John Locke, one of the first social contract theorists, posited a society that protected life, liberty, and property through lawful restraints on those in power.”
“There should also be an independent organization that would create a system for monitoring governments and firms for their compliance with an AI International Accord (AIIA). Freedom House and other such organizations exist to monitor policies and behaviors in other spheres. These organizations lack formal authority but have the standing to call out noncompliant actors and to identify areas where progress is being made, and where additional progress is most needed. In the case of AIIA, any such organization would have to be structured, staffed, and funded in ways that confer authority and legitimacy on its assessments and judgments. Support for and endorsement of its mission by like-minded nations would also be critical to its success.”
by Editor | May 31, 2021 | News
Professor Thomas Patterson, Harvard Kennedy School, President of AIWS University, presented
“Remaking the World: A Social Contract for the AI Age.” Here is his message:
While AI can do much good it can also do harm. AI entails risks, such as opaque decision-making, gender-based and other forms of discrimination, unwarranted intrusion in our private lives, and more. AI is making authoritarian regimes more durable. In the 1990s, the median life span of such regimes was roughly 10 years. Now it’s twice that long. A study by the Mass Mobilization Project found that the most durable authoritarian regimes are ones that utilize surveillance technology to track and control their people. Once people know that their government is tracking them, they become compliant.
Governments are not the only ones exploiting AI. So too, for example, are tech companies that manipulate people’s buying behavior and malicious actors who spread disinformation and discord.
Such concerns lead us to conclude that there is a need for a new social contract, one fitted to the AI age and that seeks to maximize the benefits of AI and minimize its exploitation. Without such guidelines, AI entails significant risks to the wellbeing of individuals and nations.
https://bostonglobalforum.org/bgf2022/news-and-events/the-united-nations-centennial-bgf-and-unai-initiative/
by Editor | May 31, 2021 | Event Updates
The United Nations Academic Impact and Boston Global Forum officially launched their “Remaking the world – The Age of Global Enlightenment” e-book on May 27th, 2021, with ideas, and solutions to reshape the world to become peaceful, prosperous, secure as we move towards an age of global enlightenment.
In opening remarks of the event, Mr. Ramu Damodaran, Chief of United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) and co-Chair of the United Nations Centennial BGF and UNAI Initiative, reminds us to “never think of the destination of your journey, think about the travel” as we make our mark towards an age of Artificial Intelligence and technology. In this journey, the E-book is a significant step, paving the way for advancements in digital international governance.
Conversations among the contributors to the e-book highlighted key aspects of the initiative, from the need for an alliance of like-minded individuals, to stressing the importance of education in promoting AI in the next decades.
Alex Sandy Pentland went in detail on his contributions to the e-book as well as urged for a change in the SDG 2030 goals to move towards a more positive light. By improving the SDG 2030 goals, Pentland hopes the world would improve access to opportunity, which would then in turn help reach the UN Centennial’s goals.
Former Bosnia-Herzegovina Prime Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija who expressed the need for global leaders in this enterprise towards a global enlightenment to support such initiatives like the e-book and the Social Contract for the AI Age. He also presents the idea of an International Artificial Intelligence Agency (IAIA) as a proper governance structure to enforce the initiatives and strengthen their impact in a world of social change. The prime minister hopes that AI World Society will move from being an initiative to becoming a doctrine to solidify this undertaking in world society.
“Now I see that AIWS that include seven-layer models, Social Contract for the AI Age, Framework for Artificial Intelligence International Accord, concept of new economy and finance system, AIWS values and AIWS city, it can be concluded based on those things, that we did in such a short period, became a doctrine for something which can be called remaking the world in the age of global enlightenment”
“If we want to make a difference, if we want to make pressure on decision-makers, we have to connect as much as possible, something in which I call in a broad scale, an alliance with like-minded entities”
Distinguished leaders and thinkers that also have contribute contents for the book include: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, EU President Ursula von der Leyen, Speaker of Swedish Parliament Andreas Norlen, Secretay-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, Father of the Internet Vint Cerf, Professor Judea Pearl, Professor Alex Sandy Pentland, Professor Joseph Nye, Professor Thomas Patterson, Professor Nazli Choucri, Mr. Nguyen Anh Tuan and many more.
The book “Remaking the world – the Age of Global Enlightenment” will delivered to readers on June 21, 2021.
