The G7 countries said they support the development and adoption of international technical standards for “trustworthy AI.”
Leaders of the Group of Seven, or G7, nations have called for responsible innovation and implementation of technologies like artificial intelligence. In a statement over the weekend, the committee said to work together to advance international discussions on inclusive AI governance and interoperability to achieve their goal of “trustworthy” AI.
“We stress the importance of international discussions on AI governance and interoperability between AI governance frameworks, while we recognize that approaches and policy instruments to achieve the common vision and goal of trustworthy AI may vary across G7 members,” the union said; recognizing that the international governance of new digital technologies has not kept up with the pace of its evolution. The rules of digital technologies like AI should be in line with the G7 Committee’s “shared democratic values.”
“We support the development of tools for trustworthy AI through multi-stakeholder international organizations, and encourage the development and adoption of international technical standards in standards development organizations through multi-stakeholder processes,” said the G7 union, a committee of advanced economies including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The agreement comes after several nations have called for monitoring and framing rules for the rapidly evolving generative AI. The European Union, whose major nations participate in the G7, proposed last month new copyright rules for generative AI tools like ChatGPT. The proposal is seen to pave the way for the world’s first comprehensive laws governing the AI technology that has taken the world by storm since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November last year.
Short for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, ChatGPT is a popular AI text generator and has been a center of attention for many due to its human-like response. OpenAI, the parent of the AI-based text generator, has a “multimillion-dollar investment” by American tech major Microsoft. Other tech giants like Google and Baidu are also joining the AI race to emulate the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
However, fake news, plagiarism, biasedness, manipulation, and privacy are some concerns that have led several other authorities across the globe to study and investigate the impact and potential risks that such AI platforms could pose. Italy temporarily banned ChatGPT in late March due to privacy concerns. Spain and France also joined the growing list of countries that are investigating these AI platforms.
G7 also recognized “the need to immediately take stock of the opportunities and challenges of generative AI” and formed a ministerial forum dubbed the Hiroshima AI process. “We task relevant ministers to establish the Hiroshima AI process, through a G7 working group, in an inclusive manner and in cooperation with the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and GPAI (Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence), for discussions on generative AI by the end of this year,” the union said.
