Bharat, along with 27 other countries and the European
Union signed a declaration at a meeting in United Kingdom pledging to work
together to assess the risks associated with artificial intelligence or AI.
The countries represented were – Australia, Brazil,
Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, Bharat, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel,
Italy, Japan, Kenya, Saudi, Arabia, Netherlands, Nigeria, The Philippines, the
Republic of Korea, Rwanda, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine,
United Arab Emirates, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of
America, and the European Union.
Taking to social media platform X, the official page
for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office said, “Leading AI nations have reached
a world-first agreement on AI Safety.”
“The Bletchley Park Declaration sees 28 countries
agree on opportunities, risks and the need for international action on frontier
AI, systems that pose the most urgent and dangerous risks,” it added.
The UK Government issued a statement titled “The
Bletchley Declaration”, which was signed by delegates from the 28 participating
nations – including the EU – and issued a dire warning about the threats
presented by the most sophisticated “frontier” artificial intelligence systems.
“Artificial Intelligence presents enormous global
opportunities: it has the potential to transform and enhance human wellbeing,
peace and prosperity. To realise this, we affirm that, for the good of all, AI
should be designed, developed, deployed, and used, in a manner that is safe, in
such a way as to be human-centric, trustworthy and responsible,” the
declaration read.
The Bletchley Park declaration noted the importance of
AI systems in various domains of daily routine like housing, employment,
transport, education, health, accessibility, justice, and added that their use
is likely to see an ascent.
“We recognise that this is therefore a unique moment
to act and affirm the need for the safe development of AI and for the
transformative opportunities of AI to be used for good and for all, in an
inclusive manner in our countries and globally,” it read.
“Alongside these opportunities, AI also poses
significant risks, including in those domains of daily life. To that end, we
welcome relevant international efforts to examine and address the potential
impact of AI systems in existing fora and other relevant initiatives, and the
recognition that the protection of human rights, transparency and
explainability, fairness, accountability, regulation, safety, appropriate human
oversight, ethics, bias mitigation, privacy and data protection needs to be
addressed,” it added.
The AI risk will be addressed on both national and
international levels and will lay emphasis on identifying AI safety risks of
shared concern and building a shared scientific and evidence-based
understanding of these risks.
“In furtherance of this agenda, we resolve to support
an internationally inclusive network of scientific research on frontier AI
safety that encompasses and complements existing and new multilateral,
plurilateral and bilateral collaboration, including through existing
international fora and other relevant initiatives, to facilitate the provision
of the best science available for policy making and the public good,” the
declaration stated further.
Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev
Chandrasekhar, in his address at the global summit on Artificial Intelligence said
Bharat looks at AI with a prism of openness, safety, trust and accountability.
Addressing the ‘AI Safety Summit 2023’, Chandrasehar
said Bharat has maintained that international collaborations and international
conversations was extremely important at a time and a year when “technology is
throwing up most existing opportunities ever in the history of mankind.”
The minister emphasised that Bharat sees AI as “the
next big opportunity.”
“We are extremely clear in our minds on mitigation on
what AI and indeed any emerging technology can and will represent, a prism of
openness, safety, trust and accountability,” he said.
The Union Minister noted that Prime Minister Narendra
Modi had for years argued that the future of tech be it innovations or
partnerships or the institutional framework for regulating the tech and
innovations for the common good for all mankind should be driven by a coalition
of nations rather than one country or two countries an institutional framework
is a lot more sustainable.
“The Indian digital economy and the innovation economy
and ecosystem today is growing by two and a half to three times faster than the
non-digital part of the GDP. AI is a kinetic enabler of the already
accelerating digital economy, innovation, growth, and governments,” the
minister said.
Meanwhile, tech billionaire and CEO of X Elon Musk was
among those who were seen at the two-day summit led by UK Prime Minister Rishi
Sunak that began yesterday at the historic Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire.
According to the UK government, the summit’s
objectives are for participants to “work towards a shared understanding of
risks” posed by AI and organise a global effort to mitigate them.
ANI
