Why Global Pact on AI matters?

Why Global Pact on AI matters?

Context: Recently, World’s first ever Artificial Intelligence (AI) Safety Summit was organized by UK government at Bletchley Park.

About the Summit:
• An agreement on First day “a shared understanding of the opportunities and risks posed by frontier AI”.
• Twenty-eight major countries including the United States, China, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, and India, and the European Union agreed to sign on a declaration saying global action is needed to tackle the potential risks of AI.

What is the Bletchley Park Declaration?
• “Frontier AI” is defined as highly capable foundation generative AI models that could possess dangerous capabilities that can pose severe risks to public safety.
• The declaration incorporates an acknowledgment of the substantial risks from potential intentional misuse or unintended issues of control of frontier AI — especially cybersecurity, biotechnology, and disinformation risks.
• These risks are “best addressed through international cooperation”, according to the Bletchley Park Declaration.

What is US President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI Safety that has gained lot of attention?
• The executive order aimed at safeguarding against threats posed by AI, and exerting oversight over safety benchmarks used by companies to evaluate generative AI bots such as ChatGPT and Google Bard.
• It requires AI companies to share the results of tests of their newer products with the federal government before making the new capabilities available to consumers.
• The safety tests undertaken by developers, known as “red teaming”, are aimed at ensuring that new products do not pose a threat to users or the public at large.

Steps taken to regulate AI by other countries:
• European Union – It has proposed to bring in a new AI Act that classifies artificial intelligence according to use-case scenarios, based broadly on the degree of invasiveness and risk.
• United Kingdom – UK’s approach aims to foster, and not stifle, innovation in this field.
• United States – Bill of Rights

What have tech leaders earlier called for?
• A summit in April earlier involved leaders Elon Musk (of X, SpaceX, and Tesla), Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and more than 15,000 others who called for for a six-month pause in AI development. The tech-leaders warned that Labs are in an “out-of-control race” to develop systems that no one can fully control.
• Musk warned that AI is “one of the biggest threats” and an “existential risk” to humans, who face being outsmarted by machines for the first time.
• Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT — had also called for an international regulatory body for AI, akin to that overseeing nuclear non-proliferation.

What has been India’s stance?
• India has called for Global framework on the expansion of “ethical” AI tools.
• A Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) paper earlier this year asked the Centre to setup a domestic statutory authority to regulate AI in India through the lens of a “risk-based framework”.
• Initially, India’s stance on AI didn’t call to regulate AI but it has certainly changed in the past few months.