AI is on everyone’s mind. Is the UN the right place to find out what to do?

Written By: Aniqa Batool
Last Updated On: September 26, 2023

THE UNITED NATIONS (UN) Only a few years ago, artificial intelligence was barely mentioned in the United Nations General Assembly, a gathering of world leaders.

However, as the release of ChatGPT last autumn heightened both excitement and apprehension about AI, it has been a hot issue this year at diplomacy’s largest yearly event.

Presidents, premiers, monarchs, and cabinet ministers met as governments at all levels considered or passed AI legislation. Guardrails are needed, but industry heavyweights want to protect the technology’s envisioned benefits. Outsiders and even some insiders warn of potentially catastrophic hazards, and everyone agrees that there is no time to waste.

Many people believe that the United Nations is the only location where the issue can be addressed on a large scale.

The world organization has some unique qualities to offer, such as unrivaled breadth and a track record of brokering global agreements, and it plans to start an AI advisory board this autumn.

“Having a convergence, a common understanding of the risks, that would be a very important outcome,” said Amandeep Gill, the United Nations’ chief of technology policy, in an interview. He noted that it would be extremely beneficial to achieve a consensus on what type of governance works, or might work, to minimize dangers and maximize chances for good.

Days after US senators met behind closed doors with tech titans and skeptics to discuss artificial intelligence, President Joe Biden stated that Washington is trying “to make sure we govern this technology — not the other way around, having it govern us.”The most important meetings that we are having are at the United Nations — because it is the only body that is inclusive, that brings all of us here,” Omar Al-Olama, the UAE’s minister for artificial intelligence, said at a United Nations-sponsored event attended by four high-ranking officials from various countries. It piqued the interest of a half-dozen of their colleagues, who offered audience comments.

However, while the United Nations has advantages, it also faces the limitations of a big-tent, consensus-seeking attitude that moves slowly at times. Furthermore, its members are governments, whereas AI is driven by a diverse group of commercial enterprises.

Still, a global issue necessitates a global venue, and “absolutely a place to have these conversations,” says Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a political risk advising firm.

Even if governments do not build AI, Gill believes they can “influence the direction that AI takes.”

But it will take more than improving telecommunications infrastructure. Countries that got left behind before need to have “the language, culture, the different histories that we come from, represented in the development of artificial intelligence,” Etcheverry said at the U.N.-sponsored side event.

Chilean Science Minister Aisén Etcheverry believes AI could allow for a digital do-over, a chance to narrow gaps that earlier tech opened in access, inclusion, and wealth.

Gill, who’s from India, shares those concerns. Dialogue about AI needs to expand beyond a “promise and peril” dichotomy to “a more nuanced understanding where access to opportunity, the empowerment dimension of it … is also front and center,” he said.

Their work is directed at countries that lack pathologists, particularly in rural areas. A 3D-printed magnifying lens fits mobile cameras and snaps photographs of microscope slides; AI image processing then selects out and identifies viruses. Google’s charitable arm recently donated $1.5 million to the lab.

In between attending General Assembly-related events, Nakasi stated that AI is “an enabler” of human action.

“We can’t be able to just leave it to do each and everything on its own,” she continued. “But once it is well regulated, where we have it as a support tool, I believe it can do a lot.”