UN touts panel for 'human control' of AI as leaders weigh message
A new UN panel on artificial intelligence aims to "make human control a technical reality", the global body's chief said Friday as leaders at a New Delhi summit weighed their message on the future of the divisive technology.
The flip side of the gold rush surrounding AI is the risk of job disruption, online abuse and the heavy electricity consumption of data centres.
"We are barrelling into the unknown," UN chief Antonio Guterres told the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, which wraps up later Friday. "The message is simple: Less hype, less fear. More facts and evidence."
The United Nations General Assembly has confirmed 40 members for a new group called the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, he said.
The advisory body -- aiming to be to AI what the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to global warming -- was created in August.
"Science-led governance is not a brake on progress" but can make technological development "safer, fairer, and more widely shared", Guterres said.
"When we understand what systems can do -- and what they cannot -- we can move from rough measures to smarter, risk-based guardrails."
Dozens of world leaders and ministers are expected to deliver on Friday a shared view on the risks and opportunities posed by AI to cap the five-day summit.
It is the fourth annual global meeting focused on AI policy, and the next one will take place in Geneva in the first half of 2027, the Swiss president said on Thursday.
The Delhi gathering is the first AI summit in a developing country, with India taking the opportunity to push its ambitions to catch up with the United States and China.
India expects more than $200 billion in investments over the next two years, and US tech titans unveiled new deals and infrastructure projects this week.
- 'Common good' -
OpenAI's Sam Altman, who leads the company behind ChatGPT, has called for oversight in the past but said last year that taking too tight an approach could hold the United States back in the AI race.
"Centralisation of this technology, in one company or country, could lead to ruin," he said Thursday, one of several top tech CEOs to take the stage.
"This is not to suggest that we won't need any regulation or safeguards. We obviously do, urgently, like we have for other powerful technologies."
But the broad focus of the New Delhi event, and vague promises made at the previous summits in France, South Korea and Britain, could make concrete commitments unlikely.
Even so, "governance of powerful technologies typically begins with shared language: what risks matter, what thresholds are unacceptable", said Niki Iliadis, director of global AI governance at The Future Society.
"It's true that AI companies are influential, but they are not sovereign," she told AFP.
Discussions at the Delhi summit, attended by tens of thousands from across the AI industry, have covered big topics from child protections to the need for more equal access to AI tools worldwide.
"We are entering an era where humans and intelligence systems co-create, co-work and co-evolve," Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday.
"We must resolve that AI is used for the global common good."
India also formally joined a US-led "Pax Silica" initiative aimed at "about building supply chains that will not be held hostage" at securing AI supply, Jacob Helberg, US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, told the summit.
A.Davey--TNT
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