High on the agenda at the UN’s Summit of the Future in New York in September was global AI governance. It featured as part of the Global Digital Compact (GDC), a UN-driven effort to seize the opportunities presented by digital technology and tackle the challenges – especially the digital divide – that come with it. With the incoming Trump administration in the US likely to disengage from multilateral institutions, the EU should step in and support a coalition of countries and stakeholders invested in broadening access to key technologies such as AI. That would help ensure that the UN’s proposals for inclusive AI governance and capacity-building do not go unheeded.
The world leaders that convened in New York in September adopted a Pact for the Future that includes the GDC. The final approved document contains recommendations on making AI governance more inclusive of voices from a broader range of countries, and ensuring countries aren’t left behind when it comes to governance, development, and adoption of AI technologies.
To achieve this, the GDC calls for the creation of a UN Scientific Panel on AI tasked with promoting scientific understanding of the technology. Moreover, it recommends initiating a Global Dialogue on AI Governance, and establishing a Global Fund on AI. This would address gaps in capacity and collaboration, and empower local efforts to make progress towards the SDGs.
The unavoidable question then arises: How will the Trump 2.0 administration affect the implementation of these recommendations? Analysts foresee its “America First” approach placing much less emphasis on working with the likes of the UN and funding global initiatives. Instead, its dealings with other countries are likely to be transactional.
It is reasonable to expect that active US support for UN-centred AI governance efforts will be minimal, and that the Trump administration will instead focus on strengthening domestic AI capabilities with a view to outperforming China. This gives rise to another question: How will the UN’s proposals on AI fare without the active support of the US, which is the central global player and producer of this technology?
Europe should fill the vacuum by leading the way in propagating development and use of public interest AI systems. It should do this by working with partners to help disseminate the technology, particularly where it can help overcome major development obstacles. Examples of the purposeful deployment of AI include enhancing food production and distribution logistics, improving preparedness against extreme weather, and increasing access to health and education.
How could efforts to democratise AI access be accomplished in a cost-effective manner? One solution lies in the pooling of resources, both financial and in-kind contributions, among stakeholders. Another is the scaling of common efforts on the delivery side, including via public-private regional AI hubs that also pool talent and resources for the benefit of researchers and entrepreneurs from participating countries.
Europe should invest more in scaling up capacity building for AI that promotes sustainable development, and do so in collaboration with strategic partners. Initiatives could include facilitating access to compute and data for model training and fine-tuning, but also shared sandboxes dedicated to testing AI tools for bias, safety and reliability.
The next EU Commission has an opportunity to strengthen relations with key external partners by supporting common initiatives aimed at fostering the inclusive governance and dissemination of pro-development AI.
Florian Cortez is a fellow researcher at the European Policy Centre.
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