U.S. leads “AI for good” push

The United States is leading a new diplomatic push at the United Nations for all governments to support “AI for good and for all,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield tells Axios AI+’s Ryan Heath.

Why it matters: The richest and most powerful governments that back responsible-AI initiatives have steered away from the deeply divided U.N. as an AI forum — until now.

The big picture: The U.S. wants the U.N. to explicitly affirm that AI will be deployed in ways that are consistent with the U.N.’s founding documents: the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

• The resolution’s backers see it as a way to get all countries to recommit to those founding documents in the context of AI, which is already being pressed into military service by governments worldwide and also deployed in ways that violate human rights.

The latest: The U.S. circulated a draft General Assembly resolution Wednesday, obtained by Axios, with the “crazily ambitious” goal of winning the support of all 193 U.N. member countries, per Thomas-Greenfield.

• American diplomats have been “working across the board,” Thomas-Greenfield said, with early supporters ranging from Kenya to Chile to EU countries.
• Thomas-Greenfield said she has “directly engaged” with Chinese Ambassador Zhang Jun and is hopeful Beijing will support the text.

Συνέχεια εδώ