G20 leaders mull global oversight of AI

Leaders at the Group of 20 summit discussed how to harness artificial intelligence for economic development while protecting human rights, with some calling for global oversight of the rapidly evolving technology.

G20 host, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said the group should create a framework for “human-centric” AI governance while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested a similar oversight body to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“It is telling that even the makers and inventors of AI are calling on political leaders to regulate,” she said at a G20 session in New Delhi on Sunday.

In their final communique, the leaders said they would work to ensure “responsible AI development, deployment and use”, that would protect rights, transparency, privacy and data protection, and avoid other issues. They also agreed to pursue a “pro-innovation regulatory/governance approach” that maximises the benefits of AI but takes into account the risks associated with it.

The statement follows agreement on the need for governance by the leaders of the Group of Seven advanced economies, who in May expressed concern about the risk of the technologies. Meeting in Japan, they launched a “Hiroshima Process” to hold cabinet-level discussions on the issue and present the results by the end of the year.

AI is also expected to be a core issue for Italy’s G7 presidency in 2024. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Modi discussed coordination at this weekend’s G20, according to her office.

Global summit

The UK will host the first global summit on AI on 1-2 November. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is trying to position Britain at the vanguard of the technology, which has the potential to do good — such as speeding up medical diagnoses and cutting transport emissions — but also risks being deployed for nefarious purposes such as rigging elections and spreading false information.

US President Joe Biden and other G7 leaders, along with tech chiefs including OpenAI chief Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, are expected to be invited to the UK summit.  — Devidutta Tripathy, with Alberto Nardelli and Jorge Valero, (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP

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