India backs effort at UN to ensure AI is 'secure, trustworthy' & open

UNITED NATIONS: India is behind an effort at the United Nations (UN) to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) systems are “secure and trustworthy” and to keep them open and accessible to the Global South.

India is cosponsoring with the US a General Assembly resolution that calls for promoting “safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems” and “bridging the artificial intelligence and other digital divides between and within countries”.

Amid growing global concerns about dangers to society, politics and economies from AI, the proposed resolution, a draft of which was seen by IANS, emphasises taking steps against the misuse of the system and preventing vulnerabilities and risks.

The draft suggests promoting “innovation for the internationally interoperable identification, classification, evaluation, testing, prevention and mitigation of vulnerabilities and risks during the design and development, and prior to deployment and use of artificial intelligence system”.

It would encourage the “incorporation of feedback mechanisms to allow evidence-based discovery and reporting by end-users and third parties of technical vulnerabilities and, as appropriate, misuses of artificial intelligence systems and artificial intelligence”.

US Permanent Representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who is spearheading the move to get the resolution adopted by the Assembly, said on Thursday on behalf of the countries co-sponsoring it, “As AI technologies rapidly develop, there is urgent need and unique opportunities for member states to meet this critical moment with collective action.”

The draft “establishes a shared vision that AI systems should be human-centric, reliable, explainable, ethical, inclusive, privacy-preserving, and responsible, with a sustainable development orientation, and in full respect, promotion and protection of human rights and international law", she said.

Highlighting the urgency of dealing with the galloping growth of AI and its tentacles reaching everywhere, 53 other countries besides India are joining in co-sponsoring the resolution.

The draft focuses on development and the needs of developing countries, calling for the acceleration of AI use to realise the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals covering a range from abolishing poverty to building just societies with a target date of 2030.

It calls for helping “developing countries in capacity building, access and sharing the benefits of safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems in achieving all 17 Sustainable Development Goals”.