India, EU, and 27 Nations Sign World’s First Pact to Mitigate AI Threats
London, November 2, 2023: As concerns mount about the potential disruptions that artificial intelligence (AI) may pose, a historic milestone was achieved as India, together with 27 other nations, including the United States and the United Kingdom, joined hands with the European Union to sign a groundbreaking declaration. This declaration commits the signatories to collaborate on assessing and addressing the risks associated with AI. The historic moment took place at the inaugural ‘AI Safety Summit,’ hosted by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the iconic Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire on November 1.
The declaration, signed by the participating countries, underscores their commitment to working together to harness the benefits of AI while ensuring that it contributes to inclusive economic growth, sustainable development, and innovation. Moreover, it aims to safeguard human rights and fundamental freedoms and foster public trust and confidence in AI systems to unlock their full potential.
“We welcome the international community’s efforts so far to cooperate on AI to promote inclusive economic growth, sustainable development and innovation, to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms, and to foster public trust and confidence in AI systems to fully realize their potential,” the declaration reads.
It further highlights the significance of international endeavors to scrutinize and tackle the potential impacts of AI systems in existing forums and other relevant initiatives. This includes addressing crucial aspects such as the protection of human rights, transparency, explainability, fairness, accountability, regulation, safety, appropriate human oversight, ethics, bias mitigation, as well as privacy and data protection.
The Bletchley Declaration underscores the pivotal role of AI in various facets of daily life, encompassing housing, employment, transportation, education, healthcare, accessibility, and justice. It also anticipates the continued growth of AI’s presence in these sectors in the future.
During his address at the summit, India’s Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, cautioned against allowing innovation to outpace regulation in the AI domain. Drawing parallels with the challenges faced by governments in the past decade due to the rapid growth of the internet and social media, he emphasized the importance of avoiding a similar scenario with AI.
“We have learned in the last 10-15 years as governments that by allowing innovation to get ahead of regulation, we opened ourselves to the toxicity and the misinformation and the weaponization that we see on the Internet today, represented by social media,” Minister Chandrasekhar stated. He stressed that such a future is not the path they should chart for AI in the coming years.
This historic pact represents a significant step towards ensuring the responsible and secure development of AI technologies and underscores the global commitment to address the challenges and opportunities presented by artificial intelligence.
