The past year has seen conversations around AI increasingly turning from hype and futuristic promises to the need for more responsible approaches to its development and application in the real world. There is a growing recognition that, while AI systems may bring many benefits, they also raise serious ethical concerns, with impacts on privacy, fairness, democratic processes and the environment.
These concerns are so wide-ranging and far-reaching that they cannot be addressed solely within the bounds of national borders. Instead, AI governance must be approached as a global-scale challenge by engaging meaningfully with a broad range of stakeholders.
This will require increased cooperation between countries through multilateral collaborations that contribute towards globally accepted norms for AI governance. Importantly, this global approach necessitates expanding beyond the debates happening in the main centres of AI innovation across the UK, US and Europe to acknowledge and actively integrate local knowledge and perspectives from further afield. By fostering genuinely inclusive discussions around AI governance, we can ensure that efforts to prevent and mitigate harms are exercised consistently, equitably, and with human rights at their heart.
Advancing efforts for global AI governance
Recently, several international efforts to shape AI governance have gained traction, including the adoption of the Council of Europe’s first international treaty on AI, and the Global Digital Compact at the UN Summit of the Future 2024. In line with this agenda, the Turing and UNESCO have also made concerted efforts towards a more global approach to AI governance.
Notably, UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence – drafted in collaboration with the Turing’s Ethics & Responsible Innovation Team – was adopted in November 2021 and is applicable to all 194 of UNESCO’s member states. This recommendation is the first global standard on the ethics of AI. It prioritises the protection of human rights and dignity and promotes the advancement of fundamental principles such as fairness, transparency and explainability, whilst also providing practical routes for concrete action.
Whilst this recommendation sets out globally endorsed core values, principles and policy areas that need to be addressed and integrated into the effective governance of AI, an open challenge remains to realise these aims and ensure that governments around the world are actively working to advance them. The Turing is therefore championing a new platform designed to galvanise global efforts towards these goals.
Introducing the Global AI Ethics and Governance Observatory
The Global AI Ethics and Governance Observatory, a collaboration between the Turing, UNESCO, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and the International Telecommunication Union, has been set up to cultivate transnational and inclusive conversations around AI ethics and governance and provide a critical space for global knowledge exchange.
Launched in February 2024, the platform is guided by the notion that the way AI technologies are conceived and discussed needs to be reoriented from a merely technical perspective to a ‘sociotechnical’ one, acknowledging the interplay of social, political, economic and cultural factors that inevitably influence AI development, adoption and regulation. Through this lens, the Observatory is laying the foundations for designing contextualised, democratic and culturally responsive approaches to governance. Driven by the need for diverse forms of expertise on the impacts of AI, the initiative seeks to bolster collaboration between academic researchers, AI ethicists, AI practitioners, policymakers and civil society.
One of the Observatory’s key tools is the Readiness Assessment Methodology, which helps UNESCO member states to strengthen their capacity for implementing robust AI regulation by providing detailed data and insights on how prepared they are for ethical and responsible AI adoption. Another area of the Observatory is the AI Ethics and Governance Lab, which brings together articles about key issues in this area, including concrete insights from practitioners, and policy recommendations. Covered among these pieces is Turing research exploring AI standards and the importance of integrating children’s rights into AI governance.
What’s next for the Observatory?
The Observatory is a living resource, continually updated and expanded to capture the evolving AI ethics and governance landscape globally. Over 55 countries around the world are currently completing the Readiness Assessment Methodology, with the data becoming available as their reports are finalised.
A new addition to the platform will be the Civil Society Organisation (CSO) Repository – an open-access resource that will serve as a comprehensive directory of global CSOs working at the intersection of AI ethics and governance.
The Turing is also developing a dedicated online collaborative space called the Responsible and Ethical AI (REA) Platform, which will support UNESCO’s leading expert networks, including Women4Ethical AI, Business Council for Ethics of AI, and AI Ethics Experts Without Borders.
Moving forward, the Turing and UNESCO will together continue to advance a research agenda around ecosystem-level transformation of AI ethics and governance, with the goal of enhancing global efforts to ensure that AI systems are equitable and responsible. Stay tuned for further updates.
Visit the Global AI Ethics and Governance Observatory
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