Panellists At UN: Create A Global Research Centre For Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence can solve many challenges facing humanity and it is seen playing a contributing role to the achieving of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but being data-driven, the inevitable question that arises is who owns it and manages it.

AI is often defined as the science of making computers do things that require intelligence when done by humans, and questions about who owns and controls it have been discussed at the international level in Geneva.

ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao in his closing remarks on 9 June at the AI for Good Global Summit said, “As the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, put it: ‘AI is a new frontier. We don’t have the answers to many questions yet. And we are not even sure we know all the questions that need to be asked’.

“But all participants converged on one point,” he said. “We need a platform bringing together governments, industry and all other stakeholders to discuss those complex questions and generate ideas that will allow us to use AI tools for good.”

The AI (Artificial Intelligence) for Good Global Summit took place from 7-9 June, organised by the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and XPRIZE Foundation, self-defined as an “innovation engine.”

The event was convened in partnership with 20 other United Nations agencies, such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, World Food Programme, UN Conference on Trade and Development, and the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Zhao said, “All of us together need to create a good environment for AI innovation to flourish. AI gives innovators the tools to allow them the capacity to innovate. Let’s give them the opportunity to use AI to help solve some of our greatest challenges, starting with the SDGs.

“That’s why it’s so important that both developed and developing economies, multinationals and SMEs, and universities and start-ups all join forces.”

Andy Chen, president & CEO of ​Catronic Enterprise, and Board chair at the IEEE Computer Society, a membership organisation dedicated to computer science and technology, moderated a session on 9 June focussing on Investments, Economic Aspects and Designing the Future.

He spoke of the need for government, industry, academia, the private sector and civil society to work together to mitigate the risks posed by AI and ensure that AI benefits all of humanity. His session explored how global partnerships inclusive of all segments of society will offer crucial support to the pursuit of this goal.

Speaking about the IEEE Computer Society, Chen said it has about 400,000 members worldwide with communities for technology leaders in 500 chapters which publish about 30 percent of the relevant material related to AI. Among its members, 42 percent are in the industry and computer engineering, 30 percent are academics and 10 percent are government agencies.

Eric Horvitz, managing director of research at Microsoft, with an extensive academic background, spoke by satellite link from the United States, alluding to the need to have coalitions to understand the possibilities for AI in the world outside computer science laboratories.

He has seen the word AI used a lot especially in relation to its regulation and safety.

“AI is not one thing – it is not one blue/green gas. It is a set of rich sub-disciplines and methods, visions perceptions, speech and dialogue, decisions and planning, robotics and so on. We have to consider all these different disciplines and methods in seeking to choose solutions in delivering value to human beings and organisations,” Horvitz said.

The Roadmap for Collaboration was moderated by Paul Bunje, chief scientist at XPRIZE, who got the participants to suggest how to use AI to facilitate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

They heard that in the end data management is going to power AI.

Peter Marx, vice president, Advanced Projects at General Electric, said people seem to be looking at AI to solve the world’s problems, but it is just a tool to do so. Referring to the ethics of AI, he said humanity needs to look at the impact of automation on the labor forces.

He said collaboration sometimes happens by accident and that in the managing of the public-private partnership it is important to reinforce who is going to do this and what the incentive is behind it.

“AI is powered by data, and one of the things I think we all have to grapple with when we think of development guidelines, is who is going to own and be able to access and utilise the data to go and drive the algorithms that result in the tools.”

Chaesub Lee, director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, said, “We can imagine AI is the engine of a vehicle; this engine is operated by oil which is data and unfortunately we don’t have any standard way in which to manage it.”

We can imagine AI is the engine of a vehicle; this engine is operated by oil which is data and unfortunately we don’t have any standard way in which to manage it – ITU’s Chaesub Lee

Robin Murphy, a professor at Texas A&M University and founder of Roboticists Without Borders, said the challenge for AI is capturing the knowledge.

Gary Marcus, professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, said that an institution like Geneva-based CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest and centres for scientific research, is needed for AI.

“Who is going to pay [for] it? Is it something that a government agency has to invest in?” asked Robert Opp, director of Innovation and Change Management at the United Nations World Food Programme.

Stuart Russell, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California-Berkeley and adjunct professor of neurological surgery at UC-San Francisco, noted that the AI Summit “is the first step on a long road. It is very important that participants understand the grounds rules for collaboration.”

He also said AI scientists need to be like the medical profession and have some humility because there the patient comes first and humanity must come first for AI.

On starting an institution like CERN for AI, he said it does not need an immense amount of expenditure on equipment, with which Marcus agreed.

 

Image Credits: Peter Kenny