The importance of international cooperation in the development and use of AI systems
The global AI landscape is deeply collaborative, particularly in innovation, research, and standardization. There are various compelling reasons that make it necessary to sustain and promote global cooperation. International cooperation and coordination should be promoted to ensure that AI development and use are consistent with international human rights law and principles, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, particularly in areas where AI systems rely on large amounts of data.
International cooperation is also necessary to promote responsible AI development and deployment. Various frameworks and declarations from private and public organizations have emerged to guide the development of responsible AI. For instance, those that have been front runners in this sense are Japan’s Social Principles of Human-Centric AI, Canada’s directive on AI deployment in government, the UK’s guide on understanding AI safety and ethics, and Singapore’s Model AI Governance Framework. International cooperation premised on the commonly agreed democratic tenets of AI can be instrumental in promoting responsible AI development and trust building.
Adequate progress has been made in aligning responsible AI. Despite this progress, there are still differences that manifest even among Forum for Cooperation on AI (FCAI) participants. Thus, it is crucial to ensure that the next phases in AI governance involve the translation of AI principles into regulatory frameworks, standards, and policies.
Furthermore, the collaboration between nations and multi-stakeholders can help establish shared ethical principles and standards for AI. Cooperation among states is critical for reaffirming the key principles of ethics, the freedom of expression, openness and protection of democracy, and other human rights.
The risks linked to the unlimited use of AI solutions by techno-authoritarian regimes, including China’s, make citizens vulnerable to potential human rights violations. This also threatens to split cyberspace into stacks of incompatible technology and fragment the global AI research and development process.
Global initiatives can support redesigning AI for decentralization and communal control. It can also discuss how to tackle structural inequality, identity politics, and culture, and support for technical expertise’s capacity building within the developing world.
Recommendations for ensuring international cooperation in the development of AI systems
Actualizing AI Principles: AI principles should be translated into standards, regulatory frameworks, and policies for AI development and deployment. This would help to ensure that AI systems are developed and used in a safe, responsible, and ethical manner.
Collaborative Research and Development: More collaborative R&D should be embraced, involving multidisciplinary teams in many locations. This research should mainly rely on global publications, distributed computing, shared data, and open-source software. This will allow researchers globally to gain skills and make a meaningful contribution to global AI innovation.
Government Policies: Successful AI development and deployment needs government policies that can sustain these collaboration ecosystems.