Naturally, last week’s headlines were dominated by the India AI Impact Summit. Chief executives of all kinds of human groupings (states, private corporations, and other non-state actors) were found ruminating about what AI meant for the trifecta of economy, society and politics.
Everyone descended on New Delhi to discuss everything AI.
The summit was quite chaotic even as it was more democratised in terms of access. But going beyond the controversies surrounding Chinese robot-dog, stolen exhibition items and protests, I would like to discuss the AI Impact Summit Declaration endorsed by 89 countries and organisations.
Usually, such declarations state the obvious and have little recall value. Pitching a large tent generally comes at the cost of incessant dilution of language. Getting 89 parties to agree to a declaration in New Delhi invariably led to the seven pillars being broad and generic in their framing.
But the declaration assumes a significance of greater magnitude in light of the astounding leaps AI models have made in the past few weeks in doing entry-level work, from copy-editing to legal research to writing unending lines of complex software code. From a global political point of view, too, the summit happened at a point where a handful of AI labs (concentrated mostly in the US but also in mushrooming in China) have become too powerful. Where does it leave the rest, including the wealthy markets of Europe, the most populous consumer India and have-nots in Asia, Africa and Latin America? What leverages, if any, do the rest have in shaping their destiny in a rapidly changing world?
Set against this background, three elements stood out for me in the declaration.
First, paying ode to the internet governance era principle of multistakeholderism. As the name itself implies, this principle is about giving a voice and space to all stakeholders — government, private sector, academia, technical community, civil society among others — in shaping the future of a technology. With AI now being generally understood as a general-purpose technology with pervasive impact across industries, it is now more important than ever for every stakeholder to play a role — even if differentiated on account of location, resources and proximity to power.
Second, the declaration mentions “Charter for the Democratic Diffusion of AI” and “[o]pen-source AI applications”. The focus on diffusion and openness is a welcome one. Cutting-edge AI research has its benefits, but long-term economic advantages accrue from diffusion of GPTs. And open-source, by its very nature, goes well along with diffusion.
Third, and finally, it is a great sign to have key geopolitical players of our time — the US, China, the EU, India, the UK and Russia — endorse the declaration. Even states with ongoing wars and tensions are part of the big tech pitched by India — for an Israel, there is an Iran, and for a Russia, there is a Ukraine.