Editor – Page 24 – Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI)

Apply AIWS Ecosystem at AIWS City: A Model for the Digital Age

Apply AIWS Ecosystem at AIWS City: A Model for the Digital Age

Nguyen Anh Tuan

The Digital and AI Age is remaking the world. The issue is whether that remaking will serve the common good. Judging from history, it is a mistake to assume that such an outcome will occur without empowering ordinary citizens. The Artificial Intelligence World Society (AIWS) is such an effort.

In this article, I discuss the need to empower citizens and the steps required to achieve that goal. The article concludes with a discussion of AIWS City, which is a digital city being created as a model for how ordinary people can be empowered in the Digital and AI Age.

The Goal of AIWS

AIWS seeks to create an AIWS Ecosystem that empowers citizens to create value for themselves, for others, and for society through the application of artificial intelligence, digital, blockchain, and data science technologies. It is a sharing ecosystem that rewards both the creators and users of these technologies, as well as an ecosystem that encourages everyone to innovate. It breaks down the hierarchies that traditionally have created unequal power relationships, paving the way to a sharing society. It recognizes the value of every citizen, as well as every citizen’s creative potential. It seeks to promote citizens’ economic wellbeing while also promoting ethical and community values. It aims for nothing less than the creation of a more trusting, prosperous, and compassionate world where people can live more fulfilling lives, materially and ethically.

The foundation of AIWS is the Social Contract for the Artificial Intelligence Age, which was developed by the Boston Global Forum in consultation with leading thinkers and practitioners. The Social Contract has been endorsed by organizations, including The World Leadership Alliance – Club de Madrid, which is the organization of former heads of state and heads of government of democratic countries.

As with earlier social contracts, the Social Contract for the Artificial Intelligence Age is rooted in the rights and interests of individuals, and what governments and other entities must do and are prohibited from doing to safeguard these rights and interests. The AI Social Contract and AIWS Ecosystem envision a world where everyone’s contribution is recognized and everyone has a right to education and ready access to information and technology, where no one is above the law, and where integrity, knowledge, creativity, and honesty are seen as key values in shaping policy and society. It envisions a world where governments adhere to basic values and are accountable and transparent.

The AIWS Value System

Remaking the world as a more humane, peaceful, and secure place rests on promoting the values that will foster that world. To that end, AIWS has created the AIWS Value System as a means of guiding and encouraging individuals to contribute to a changing world.

The AIWS Value System focuses on creative or innovative acts that foster a sharing society. Such acts can take many forms but would include:

– Creation or promotion of innovative ideas and organizations that offer meaningful paths for people’s political, social, economic, or moral development

– Creation or invention of technological advances that improve the lives of ordinary people

– Innovative approaches to art, culture, sport, or entertainment that improve the quality of life for ordinary people

– Voluntary acts – everything from charitable contributions to the granting of access to data – that enhance the lives of ordinary people

– Acts that promote the values inherent in the Social Contract for the Age of Artificial Intelligence

As these examples indicate, the AIWS Value System centers on action designed to help ordinary people and that contributes to the building of a sharing society.

Promoting the AIWS Value System

The AIWS Value System recognizes acts that often take place in the absence of supportive mechanisms. Yet, the creation of such mechanisms can incentivize and facilitate acts of this kind. To this end, AIWS is:

– creating the Global Enlightenment Education Program. This program will aim to inform ordinary citizens about the world in which they live, and how they can help improve it. The program will be dedicated to lifelong learning and the fostering of views that will enable ordinary citizens to be more innovative, tolerant, and participatory. The program will place special emphasis on reaching people in more remote areas who are typically left behind by technological change. The program will also emphasize the contribution that everyone, whatever their location or background, can make to the common good.

– promoting the development of legal systems that protect creativity and innovation and that respect the rights and interests of ordinary people.

– promoting creation of a cultural, social, economic, and political environment that encourages and rewards creativity and innovation; that respects the rights, interests, and abilities of ordinary people; that encourages popular participation in the creation of a more humane world; that rewards those individuals who make noteworthy creative and innovative contributions to the common good; and that recognizes those who, through ideas and action, make significant contributions to politics and society.

– promoting the development of technology systems that support creativity and innovation; that broaden participation by ordinary citizens; that contribute to the digital-age education of these citizens; that give ordinary citizens the means to directly create products and services; that foster meaningful work opportunities; that provide ordinary citizens with greater access to essential services, such as health care; and that suppress fraudulent and other harmful acts that injure ordinary citizens.

Test Model: AIWS City

The AIWS Value System is innovative and, as such, untested for its utility. AIWS will test the concept by creating the AIWS City, which will be a virtual digital city dedicated to promoting the values associated AIWS. We envision it as a community of scholars, innovators, leaders, and citizens dedicated to fostering thought, creativity, and ethical behavior.

The digital platform for AIWS City has been created and the first phase of the project will be launched on September 9, 2021. AIWS City has offices in Boston, Massachusetts (USA); Tokyo (Japan), and NovaWorld Phan Thiet, Ha Noi, and Nha Trang (Vietnam), with plans to expand to other locations at a later time.

AIWS City will include the following components:

– AIWS Home, which is the personal space of the “citizens” of AIWS City. Each citizen will have a “digital home” for their work, innovation, and entertainment. The digital home will have secure computing, data storage, and Cloud service, as well as access to data sets, software programs, and tech support.

– AIWS University, which is a digital-age university for lifelong learning. The university will focus on courses that help leaders, managers, and students understand and apply digital technology, including Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, machine learning, and blockchain. It will also include courses designed to give individuals an understanding of the larger world of which they are a part. A signature feature of the university will be its course offerings in leadership, which emphasize ethical, compassionate, team-centered, and socially responsible leadership in the Digital Age.

– AIWS Global Enlightenment Education Program, which was described earlier in this article. Citizens of AIWS City will receive a daily bulletin with information and ideas that can enhance their global understanding and enrich their personal lives.

– AIWS Forum, which will feature lectures by the world’s leading digital thinkers – scholars, innovators, philanthropists, political leaders, artists, and corporate executives. There will also be seminars and discussion groups designed to bring together communities of interest. This Forum will promote AIWS Ecosystem and AIWS Value System.

– AIWS Vint Cerf Museum of the Internet, which is named after Vint Cert, who is “the father of the Internet” and a frequent contributor to the Boston Global Forum and AIWS. The museum will be interactive and trace the history of the Internet, including the contributions of Vint Cerf and other major figures in the Internet’s development.

– AIWS History of AI House, which will display the history of AI and serve as a venue for deliberation on issues relating to AI.

– AIWS Market, which will feature products and services that promote a healthy, ethical, and productive lifestyle. The market will also serve as a small business incubator, assisting these businesses in building their brand and entering the digital market. The market will support the sale of creative and innovative products and services that promote the common good.

– AIWS College Preparatory Academy, which will assist students from developing countries to prepare for and gain admission to high-quality colleges and universities.

– AIWS Innovation Hub, which will serve as an incubator to help firms, inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality. They will be able to discuss their ideas and problems and hear from experts and practitioners on how to advance or solve them. The Innovation Hub will promote pioneering models that foster social responsibility and will reward their developers through the AIWS Rewards Program.

-AIWS Window on the World, which will provide AIWS citizens with virtual tours of the world’s great museums, concert halls, palaces, public buildings, stadiums, ancient ruins, landmark buildings, and natural wonders. And it will give them opportunities to interact with creative individuals from these venues.

AIWS Rewards Program, which will be an experimental program to test the feasibility of a value marketplace – a mechanism through which societal contributions can be exchanged for goods and services. Based on a cryptocurrency (Crypto-AIWS-Rewards), the program will seek to help reformers, innovators, artists, and others who contribute to human progress but who typically do not receive commensurate material benefits.

Remaking the World Requires Reimagining It

The great question of the Digital and AI Age is not technological in nature. Rather it is the question of what type of society we seek to create through the application of digital technology.

The digital and AI revolution and trailblazing ideas will reshape the world. Like previous industrial revolutions, it will have a transformative effect on the way we live and relate to each other. Like the others, it will be disruptive. Some business sectors will wither, while others will thrive. That is true also of people. With the other revolutions, the outcome was determined almost entirely by market forces, which worked primarily to the benefit of the powerful, typically at a significant cost to ordinary people.

AIWS seeks to ensure that the historical pattern does not become a defining feature of the Digital and AI Age. AIWS is a reimagined world, one where the rights and interests of ordinary citizens are paramount and where action is taken to empower them in ways that enlarge their voice and influence and that give them the agency to help shape a new world. AIWS recognizes that this reimagined world will require concerted action by governments, individuals, organizations, and firms. Each must be a source of innovation, and each must adhere to AIWS standards and values. Together, we can remake the world and usher in an Age of Global Enlightenment.

Framework for Artificial Intelligence International Accord

Nazli Choucri, Professor of Political Science (MIT) and co-author of Social Contract for the AI Age, contributes to the book Remaking the world – The Age of Global Enlightenment.

She wrote about the Framework for AI International Accord; some notes are here below:

Consistent with the principles the provisions of the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime as well as the EU General Directives, and respecting the Social Contract for the AI Age, the AIIA draft framework is conceived and designed as:

A multi-stakeholder, consensus-based international agreement to establish common policy and practice in development, use, implementation and applications of AI
Anchored in the balance of influence and responsibility among governments, businesses, civil society, individuals, and other entities.
Respectful of national authority and international commitments and requires assurances of rights and responsibilities for all participants and decision-entities.

To consolidate the design into a formal International Accord, it is essential to:

Review legal frameworks for AI at various levels of aggregation to identify elements essential for an international AI legal framework.
Recognize methods to prevent abuses by governments and businesses in uses of AI, Data, Digital Technology, and Cyberspace (including attacks on companies, organizations, and individuals, and other venues of the Internet)
Consolidate working norms to manage all aspects of AI innovations, and
Construct and enable response-systems for violations of rights and responsibilities associated with the development, design, applications, or implementation of AI

These Are The Startups Applying AI To Tackle Climate Change

Climate change is the most pressing threat that the human species faces today. Artificial intelligence is the most powerful tool that humanity has at its disposal in the twenty-first century.

Can we deploy the second to combat the first?

A group of promising startups has emerged to do just that.

Both climate change and artificial intelligence are sprawling, cross-disciplinary fields. Both will transform literally every sector of the economy in the years ahead. There is therefore no single “silver bullet” application of AI to climate change. Instead, a wide range of machine learning use cases can help in the race to decarbonize our world.

Nearly every major activity that humanity engages in today contributes to our carbon footprint to some extent: building things, moving things, powering things, eating things, computing things. Of these, there is a subset of decarbonization initiatives to which artificial intelligence can productively be applied. And of these, there is a subset for which compelling startup business models exist.

Many billions of dollars of enterprise value will be created in the coming years as entrepreneurs chase down these opportunities.

And make no mistake: we have reached an important inflection point in the relationship between climate change and capitalism. Unprecedented amounts of capital have begun to flow toward climate-related initiatives. In the past few years, hundreds of the world’s largest companies have publicly committed to reaching net zero emissions and have begun to adapt their organizations’ operations accordingly. Last year, the largest asset manager in the world announced that it was making climate change central to its investment strategy. Governments’ central banks have even begun to take direct policy action as they come to view climate change as a systemic economic risk.

In short, tackling climate change is not only an urgent global imperative but a massive business opportunity. As investor Chamath Palihapitiya memorably predicted: “The world’s first trillionaire will be made in climate change.”

The article was first published at Forbes.

To support on positive AI technology and applications to global impact such as climate change, Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI) and Boston Global Forum (BGF) has established Artificial Intelligence World Society Innovation Network (AIWS.net). According to AIWS.net, AI can be an important tool for helping people achieve well-being and happiness, relieve them of resource constraints and arbitrary/inflexible rules and processes. In this effort, Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI) invites participation and collaboration with think tanks, universities, non-profits, firms, and other entities that share its commitment to the constructive and development of full-scale AI for world society.

Living Culture and Artificial Intelligence

Ramu Damodaran, Chief of the United Nations Academic Impact

New York, May 26, 2021

I must have been in the eighth grade when our high school teacher, Father Pat Rebeiro, introduced us to the distinction between culture and civilization which the French author Amaury de Riencourt had put forward some years earlier, in which he expanded upon the idea put forward by Oswald Spengler earlier in The Decline of the West that, as Ben Espen has paraphrased it, “civilization is the “late” phase in a society’s life. It follows the period of “Culture,” when society creates its characteristic science, religion, art, and politics. “Espen goes on to suggest that “culture is pioneering, aesthetic, and fertile. Civilization is sterile, extensive, practical, and ethical.”

Riencourt wrote in the 1950s, shortly before Sputnik bridged our inner and outer worlds, and before the extraordinary demonstrations of a world resurgent, a world “pioneering, aesthetic and fertile” demonstrated the futility of demarcating cultures and civilizations by national or continental boundaries. Migration, the ease of collaborative research beyond the physical proximity of the researchers, and the unexpected fertility of foreign lands to greatnesses once thought indigenous to a specific national home, have allowed us a world whose civilizational moulding and moorings constantly yield a chorus, a confluence, and, indeed, a co-mingling, of cultures. Where, in this excitement and effervescence, does artificial intelligence (AI) fit in?

A good point to begin that reflection is the assertion by Governor Michael Dukakis of the character of AI, the absence of its applicability to the “too many judgments you have to make in this world that involve values, ethics and morality.” As bedrock principles, these would appear civilizational in character, the enduring geology which cultures infused but never supplanted, cultures which by the very being of their energy and spontaneity could well ignore, go beyond, reinvent —-or, yes, conform to —- values, ethics and morality. Speaking in Ho Chi Minh city (HCMH) two years ago, Ousmane Dione, World Bank Country Director for Vietnam, noted that while “ AI mimics how the brain works “, there were three key factors to measure the possibilities of its successful use in that historic city ; “setting clear and realistic expectations for where and how AI can deliver for HCMC, ensuring that there is an enabling environment for AI to succeed in practice, especially when it comes to accessing and integrating the data needed to solve the city’s challenges and, finally, making sure that we understand and manage any key risks associated with AI.”

Within the cultural space, the most self-evident area of risk posed by AI is, as Baptiste Caramiaux has written, in the challenge by “AI-generated content to authorship, ownership and copyright infringement. New exclusive rights on datasets must be designed in order to better incentivise innovation and research.” That said, as he continues, “AI challenges the creative value-chain in two ways: shifting services performed by humans to algorithms and empowering the individual creator.” It is that empowerment that will, in my view, remain one of the two greatest possibilities for AI to enhance the individual, as much as global, cultural experience.

In 2016, Microsoft, with academic and corporate partners, launched the “Next Rembrandt” project which “imprinted the AI “with 346 of Rembrandt’s known works in the hopes that it could create a unique 3D printed image in his style. An algorithm measured the distances between the facial features in Rembrandt’s paintings and calculated them based on percentages. Next, the features were transformed, rotated, and scaled, then accurately placed within the frame of the face. Finally, we rendered the light based on gathered data in order to cast authentic shadows on each feature.” The cumulative result was a product that could well have been the final work by the storied artist of the Renaissance.

Using that illustration as metaphor, one can foresee the power and possibilities in AI to create cultural experiences beyond ready human capacity, through its innate strengths of recognition, selection and assimilation, experiences that can extend to the creative and performing arts, the auditory aspiration of recreated music (think of Beethoven’s nine symphonies being fashioned into his unwritten tenth; we have a precursor already in the 2019 venture in Linz, where a performance of Mahler’s unfinished tenth symphony was followed by a six minute software composition in his style ), or a syncretic architectural fantasy that echoes Egyptian pyramids as evocatively as it does the Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Here AI is an enhancer of, and not a threat to, human enjoyment.

Corollary to this is the expansion the judicious use of AI will afford the culturally creative individual; even if its mimicking of the human brain will not allow it to become the brain itself, and happily not, it can through that process of inference and imitation address many of the more mundane aspects of the creativity while also suggesting options and possibilities for the original human brain to explore.

The cofounding by Governor Michael Dukakis and Nguyen Anh Tuan of the Boston Global Forum (BGF) of the “Artificial Intelligence World Society” (AIWS) launched “a project that aims to bring scientists, academics, government officials and industry leaders together to keep AI a benign force serving humanity’s best interests.” The idea of an AIWS would strike a particular chord for the United Nations which had looked at the idea of a “world society” in its very first years with UNESCO’s encouragement of “teaching about the United Nations and its specialized agencies since, together, these form the greatest contemporary effort, on an international, governmental scale, to move towards a world society. A booklet including some suggestions for teaching programs on the United Nations in the schools of Member States…was considered…at the UNESCO seminar at Adelphi College, New York.”

“World society” is an elegant phrase that has not acquired the reiteration it deserves; I was reminded of it when reading an article by Robert A. Scott, President Emeritus of Adelphi, where he writes “One of the most important goals of education is to learn how to reflect, how to learn from our experiences. An early experience that has stayed with me was finding small wooden signs along the paths of the camp I attended when nine years old. The signs were about three inches by seven inches and had the word “Others” carved into the wood. They were intended to inspire those walking the paths to be considerate of others, welcome others, and listen to others, no matter what their station in life. Others. Respect others. Listen to others, no matter what their station. Reflect on what they say. It may help solve a problem you never thought about.”

Those last four words point to the second possibility I sense in the power of AI to enhance the individual, to allow her the possibility to summon experiences untested and untasted from the moorings of the felt and familiar, to find in the ‘others’ that Bob Scott mentioned, ourselves. Much as the often irritating pop up advertisements that promise “if you like that you will love this”, AI can, with the voluntary consent of the online seeker, bring to the proximity of her desk or lap beauties unexplored with a confidence in their appeal that only objective algorithmical analysis can assure. And making distant cultures proximate, seeing their evanescent echoes in one’s own, is the essence of a world society.

The truth that such a society ought to be both a physical and a spiritual concept is reflected in what BGF describes as a “sophisticated pioneer model: a combination of the virtual, digital AIWS City and a real city”, the model being Phan Thiet in Viet Nam, developed by the Nova Group in that country whose Chairman, Bui Thanh Nhon, described it as “ the place for the World Leadership Alliance-Club de Madrid and the Michael Dukakis Institute to hold important annual events marked by the theme of ‘Building a New Economy’ for the world in the digital and artificial intelligence era, a venue to announce new achievements in the history of artificial intelligence and the digital economy.” It is critical to acknowledge the cultural dimension to the “new economy” through the creative sector, so much of its component cultural; as UNESCO notes, it generates “annual revenues of US$2,250 billion and global exports of over US$250 billion. According to recent forecasts, these sectors will represent around 10% of global GDP in the years to come.”

Speaking at the Riga Conference 2019 in Latvia, Tuan referred to the “need for a new social contract, one that is suited to a world of artificial intelligence, big data, and high-speed computation and that will protect the rights and interests of citizens individually and society generally. A fundamental assumption of the social contract is that the five centres of power – government, citizens, business firms, civil society organizations, and AI assistants – are interconnected and each needs to check and balance the power of the others. Citizens should have access to education pertaining to the use and impact of AI,” a thought reflective of what Governor Dukakis said at a BGF March event, of the possibilities of “new ideas, initiatives, and solutions by thinkers and creators in an effort to build a civilized, prosperous, peaceful, and happy world,” ‘creators’ an apt term to define those who say their skills and talent enhanced, and not threatened by, AI.

Forty years ago, Carl Sagan wrote: “What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

AI has taken that proof a step further, affirming in the process the linear connection between human capability and magic, affirming that magic would not find itself possible of realization without the humans that shaped it, extending inexorably and wondrously the pledge in the United Nations charter to the “dignity and worth of the human person” whose measure only the human person herself, through innovation, experiment and daring, can expand.

AI in Europe: Who’s leading the way and where is it heading?

Ireland may be the big adopter of AI in the EU, but a new report from Forrester suggests Europe is still slightly behind other regions.

Artificial intelligence is often slated as the technology that will transform the way we live and do business. But some have embraced it more than others.

Among EU countries, Ireland has the highest share of businesses using AI applications.

That’s according to European Commission data from 2020, which found that 23pc of enterprises in Ireland used any of these four AI applications: analysing big data internally using machine learning; analysing big data using natural language processing, generation or speech recognition; using a chatbot or virtual agent; or using service robots.

A recent report from research and advisory company Forrester said there’s a widespread perception that data privacy regulations, ethical concerns and reluctance to adopt cutting-edge tech have resulted in European companies being less advanced in terms of AI adoption that companies in other regions.

A 2020 survey it conducted with responses from data decision-makers in France, Germany and the UK confirmed that there is a lag, but the gap may not be as wide as many perceive it to be.

However, compared with people from other parts of the world, European respondents were less bullish overall about the benefits of AI, according to Forrester.

Large European companies including Airbus, Bosch, Rolls-Royce and Siemens have been innovating with AI, and Europe has been the birthplace of start-ups such as DeepMind and Featurespace.

However, many start-ups have been acquired by companies outside of the region (with Google snapping up UK-based DeepMind, for example) or have migrated their headquarters to the US.

The article was originally published here.

To support on positive AI applications to worldwide and European countries, Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI) and Boston Global Forum (BGF) has established Artificial Intelligence World Society Innovation Network (AIWS.net). In this effort, MDI and BGF invite participation and collaboration with governments, think tanks, universities, non-profits, firms, and other entities that share its commitment to the constructive and development of full-scale AI for world society. This initiative is to develop positive AI for helping people achieve well-being and happiness, relieve them of resource constraints and arbitrary/inflexible rules and processes, and solve important issues, such as SDGs.

In Defence of Democracy and the Rule of Law in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Advanced software and cyber-physical systems, so called ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) systems, and data driven business models increasingly govern portions of our lives: they influence how we work, love, buy, sell, communicate, meet, and navigate. They impact individual rights, social interactions, the economy, and politics. They pose new risks to national security, democratic institutions, individual dignity and human wellbeing.

Yet, citizens and their elected, accountable representatives still lack the institutional means to govern these technologies and to hold their developers and providers accountable. The ubiquitous, pervasive, and invasive, providers of these technologies have used their concentrated economic power to shield themselves from meaningful independent oversight. They work with unique power dynamics, including the ‘winners take all’ effects and a race for a limited pool of talent. Digitization has led to the emergence of what we call hereafter private corporate hegemony. The challenges to both individual rights and democratic institutions by the power they wield include unaccountable governance of communication (controlling who and what gets heard in the public square), spreading mis- and dis-information, mass surveillance, and cyber-vulnerabilities and threats. Meeting these challenges requires more than just incremental legal adjustments on both sides of the Atlantic.

Governments worldwide desire to reap the economic benefits of technologies provided by the hegemon, while at the same time aiming to constrain their power. A fundamental mismatch exists, however, between the pace at which innovative yet destabilizing digital applications can be deployed and the pace, as well as rigor, with which norms, standards and regulations are put in place. To complicate matters, traditional narratives around competition, security, and unfettered innovation undermine the adoption of proper constraints. This creates unhealthy degrees of freedom for hegemony that drive a trajectory of the digital and technological revolution toward unprecedented forms of surveillance capitalism and strategic instability. Governments, stakeholders and citizens on both sides of the Atlantic have therefore rightfully expressed concern that this situation will continue to fragment the societies for which they hold responsibility, weaken democracy and the rule of law, as well as compromise fundamental human and constitutional rights.

In light of these challenges, we have come together in an interdisciplinary Transatlantic Reflection Group on Democracy and the Rule of Law in the Age of “Artificial Intelligence” to address the systemic challenges to democracy emanating from monopolies and centralised governance of AI. We believe democracy and the rule of law themselves are at stake and we share reflections on the principles that should govern how these challenges are to be addressed.

Technological solutionism should not replace democracy

Without historic, radical reform, citizens and their elected representatives will be disempowered and lose the means for effective self-governance. The promise of future technologies delivering economic growth cannot justify today’s erosion of democratic norms, fundamental rights, and the rule of law. Neither should the vulnerability and monopolization of digitized systems jeopardize the peaceful cooperation of states. Unregulated technological deployment will exacerbate inequalities and undermine trust. The short-term benefits could be far outweighed by longer-term risks and undesirable societal as well as political consequences.

The challenges to institutions, laws, and democratic processes – combined with the litany of claims that unregulated business interests can better address global challenges than democracy – have weakened trust in democracy and played into the hands of authoritarianism.

In this situation, there is a need to reaffirm that democratically established laws, by democratically elected and accountable representatives, are the noble and legitimate expressions of the people. To preserve these fundamental principles, radical reform is needed.

Affirming the primacy of democracy

AI cuts to the heart of how we live. Decisions on how to govern such systems, their data and process oversight must not be decided by economic players who continue to overwhelm policy makers with demands to be either left alone or given special treatment.

Rather than stand by as witnesses to the erosion of democracy, we call for policy processes that empower citizens and guarantee vibrant, reflective, and free societies, where citizens and regions can have true influence. Our societies must be based on horizontal and vertical divisions of power, and improved checks and balances to safeguard against monopolistic concentration and abuse, such as the abuse of democracy through regulatory capture.

The rules must go beyond technology-specific regulation, or the regulation of business practices. Like the technological and economic developments they are intended to address, they, by their nature, will influence how humans interact with each other and with their civic institutions, how democracy and markets function and how people live. Done well, however, they will ensure the rule of law curtails overreaches of power, by private or governmental actors.

These laws must serve the public interest and in doing so they may well be asymmetrical by creating stronger obligations that bind the big and powerful. To ensure that citizens are democratically empowered and can trust the legislative process at the local, national, and supranational level, it is important that the law-making be accessible, clear and transparent and that the laws are not only enacted but also enforced.

Empowering citizens through institutions of countervailing power

Democracies must foster and strengthen countervailing powers and the type of checks and balances necessary to control power in the age of AI. Countervailing powers can arise from scalable new technologies and business models on the one hand, and from effective and enforceable legislation on the other. Democracy must preserve space for both.

As a starting point, democracies must protect individuals and political systems from both governmental and non-governmental abuses of power facilitated by the targeted use of predictive technologies and personal data collection. Democracies must also prevent the weakening of local entrepreneurial activity through killer acquisitions and other anti-competitive behaviours.

Citizens and their elected representatives will be capable of responding to the challenges posed by the new technologies and new economic dynamics only if they are equipped with sound information about the real effectiveness and impact of the technologies. To that end, policymakers should address the need for an evidence-based public policy dialogue and to empower citizens and civil society to meaningfully participate. They should also encourage US-European cooperation in the development of AI benchmarking protocols in order to promote values-driven, evidence-based policy cooperation.

Where massive computing systems can effectively regulate human behaviour or dictate government behaviour, it is important that our societies preserve and strengthen the democratic accountability of policy actors and demand that those actors defend the public interest and work together to develop policies to avoid capture by private economic interests. Governments and legislators must equip themselves with their own, state of the art science and technology impact assessment capabilities and share the results of any such assessments with the public. That should help to empower citizens and make them and their representatives less dependent on the sometimes incomplete or false information provided by corporations on technological capabilities, risks, and solutions.

Countervailing power can also come from governmental authorities (e.g., consumer protection, data protection, or competition authorities), non-governmental civic institutions (e.g., unions, non-governmental organisations, civil society, academia, and the free press), and citizens themselves. That power can be effectively exercised, however, only if steps are taken to ensure that providers of technological products and services are held democratically accountable, that mechanisms exist for citizens to assert their basic human and civil rights against economically more powerful actors, and that the public is well informed about both the benefits and the risks presented by the emerging technologies and business models.

Universities, media, and civil society should be empowered to renew and strengthen their commitment to supporting the exercise of reason, inquiry for truth and informed opinion. The freedom of academics and civil society to criticize state and corporate conduct must be protected.

Building bridges between technologists and policy communities

Independent technology experts are needed as participants in reliably inclusive democratic processes protected from private economic interests. While the number and importance of scientists and engineers in our societies has increased, their participation in public policy and formal democratic fora, such as parliaments, has declined. On the one hand, engineers and scientists should engage more in formal democratic decision-making institutions, on the other hand political and democratic actors and institutions must build bridges for meaningful and visible engagement. Independent experts informing, training and collaborating with policy and decision makers must fill gaps in how governments understand technology and familiarise technologists and scientists with the specificities and complexity of decision-making in participatory democracies.

A broad array of perspectives are needed to formulate effective measures for understanding and mitigating the risks posed by advanced technologies. The role of technology as part of the proper functioning of our democracies should be informed by diverse and multidisciplinary stakeholders, from philosophers, youth representatives and labour unions to the impacted communities themselves.

Joining forces: Jointly defending democracy across the Atlantic

The survival of democracy on both sides of the Atlantic requires that American and European governments demonstrate their ability to act decisively and deliver efficiently in the face of great challenges. Without claiming perfection as to their democratic practices, public authorities and legislators in Europe and the Americas should join forces to support a new upward dynamic in order to develop effective legislative frameworks to address the challenges outlined here. It may be only through such a cooperation and partnership that they are able to acquire the strength and reach needed to protect and empower the individual and defend democratic values against the hegemonial power of tech corporations.

With coherence across European and transatlantic jurisdictions, laws will have greater scale and will be more effective at addressing these challenges. Societies need not suffer from a competitive race to the bottom on standards for public life and protection of fundamental rights caused by free riding, forum shopping, and the exploitation of international tensions.

The fast pace of technological innovation and the economic success of the platform economy must not slow or erode the democratic process nor disempower individual human beings. While public institutions will need to reform to remain at the forefront of emerging technologies, this will be of little use if basic principles of self-governance are not maintained and protected through appropriate regulatory mechanisms and rigorously enforced.

Democratic deliberation to develop consensus, as well as the human ability to re-interpret legal norms in consideration of new technologies and new economic conditions are strengths, not weaknesses. A stable legal environment is crucial for accountability and certainty: while there is no doubt that legislation must evolve over time, democratic lawmakers should not be expected to publish and amend laws as frequently as software developers code, nor would this make for good law.

Technology regulation must not focus narrowly on zeitgeist trends. In contrast, technology-neutral laws, which are drafted in open language and without reliance on buzzwords, enable re-interpretation and will remain relevant as technologies and business models evolve. They must start with core values and principles and focus on what is needed to protect and advance those values and principles. The process of filling in the details should be left to delegated legislation, transparent standard setting processes, and bodies responsible for enforcement.

We ask that US and European leadership remain committed to coherent laws, the primacy of the public interest, and the shaping of the digital economy through democracy on both sides of the Atlantic. We call on decision makers to remember the crucial importance of transatlantic coherence for reasons of both transatlantic democratic accountability and the rapidly advancing global competition. What is needed now are well-designed legal frameworks and strong institutions, which empower and enfranchise citizens and serve the common interest of people in Europe, the US, and beyond, and ensure:

FAIR COMPETITION AND TAXATION

Competition law: Review competition rules to enable antitrust authorities to better pre-empt and tackle anti -competitive behaviour, including acquisitions of emerging competitors and the appropriation of innovative ideas by dominant incumbents, while reducing barriers to entry. Explore transatlantic regulatory cooperation to overcome the territorial market segmentation that ultimately favours transnationally operating digital corporations.
Upskilling of supervisory authorities: Give supervisory authorities the mandate, skills and resources needed to understand, oversee, and address how AI affects their respective domains.
Address tax ‘free riding’: Ensure that those who benefit from the digital economy the most contribute financially to sustain core functions of democracy and public infrastructure, and pay for the undesirable societal impact of their technologies, through taxes where profit is generated.

DATA GOVERNANCE

Data quality: Ensure that data used to train AI systems with potentially major impacts, is governed by legal frameworks that incorporate proper quality requirements, including reliability of testing and verification.
Behavioural and biometric data: Ensure that behavioural and biometric data does not serve the training of AI systems capable of manipulation, discrimination and disinformation, in particular with regard to biometric profiling and emotion recognition technologies
Data access: Ensure access to and use of data which is in the public interest, provided this does not interfere with human rights. Such access should also be ensured between services, especially when data and computation capabilities are held by companies, which calls for private and public open data policies and protocols that support interoperability as well as data portability.
Transatlantic data flows: Create conditions of trust enabling transatlantic data flows based on the fundamental rights to data protection and privacy; create mechanisms of mutual protection and respect firmly grounded in ‘effective and practical protection’ within the relevant jurisdictions.

FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS

Human rights and dignity: Establish practical and effective protection of human rights and liberties such as human dignity, non-discrimination, the presumption of innocence, due process, and the protection of children’s rights
AI Safety: Put in place regulatory frameworks promoting AI governance, transparency, robustness, and cybersecurity, update legislation to tackle unacceptable cases of algorithmic discrimination and limit corporations’ ability to escape liability for their AI systems.
Transparency and access: Supervisory authorities need access to government and corporate infrastructure, processes, and ecosystems, including algorithms and databases, and policies, to ensure adequate oversight and accountability. This should not be prohibited in the name of either government or corporate secrecy.

INDEPENDENCE AND HUMAN AGENCY

Free press and academia: Provide a framework for a vibrant, independent press and funding to foster independent academic and civil society organisations and empower them to scrutinise and investigate the impacts, abuses, and misuses of emerging technologies.
Values-based technology design: Ensure all types of processes that include automated decision making and AI operate according to principles of responsibility and accountability, transparency, explainability, respect for human dignity and meaningful control. These values, the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights must be protected by design throughout the life cycle of the advanced software and cyber-physical systems.
Evidence-based decision-making and assessment: Address the need for the public policy dialogue to be evidence-based and for citizens and civil society to be empowered to participate meaningfully in this dialogue. Establish regular open AI benchmarks intended to soundly assess and report on the extent to which AI-enabled systems comply with the values set out above. Encourage the US, Europe, and other interested parties to cooperate in the development of any such benchmarking protocols.

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

Risk monitoring and mitigation: Ensure that emerging technologies, including those developed in the private sector, do not undermine national security or international peace in unforeseen ways. Such risks must be continuously monitored by supervisory authorities and addressed in an anticipatory manner.
National security: Ensure public oversight over AI systems to keep them safe and secure. Identify mechanisms and instruments to better integrate safety, security and economic considerations in regulatory policy.
AI in the military: Leverage towards a comprehensive treaty based mechanism on the use of autonomous decision-making systems and AI; especially for military purposes.
Fighting digital authoritarianism: Scale multilateral engagement on technical norms and standards to defend against digital authoritarianism and provide positive alternatives to authoritarian digital and physical entanglements by supporting bottom-up, self-determined digital development strategies.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND SIGNATORIES
Contributors participated in their personal capacity. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers or organisations they might be associated with. The signatories support the general gist of the statement, without necessarily agreeing to the details of every formulation.

CONTRIBUTORS to the Reflection Group on Democracy and the Rule of Law in the Age of “Artificial Intelligence” are, in alphabetical order:
Cathryn Culver Ashbrook, Nicolas Economou, Dr. Bruce Hedin, Dr. Mireille Hildebrandt, Dr. Konstantinos Karachalios, Anja Kaspersen, Paul Nemitz, Tuan Anh Nguyen, Marietje Schaake, Dr. Sarah Spiekermann, Alex Stamos, Dr. Thomas Streinz, Wendell Wallach

SIGNATRORIES

Dr. Greg Adamson
Honorary, Computing and Information Systems

The University of Melbourne

Nicolas Economou

Chief Executive Officer, H5

Chair, Law Committee, IEEE Global Initiative on the Ethics of A/I Systems

Chair, Law, Science, and Society Initiative, The Future Society

Principal Coordinator, The Athens Roundtable on AI and the Rule of Law

Dr. Bruce Hedin

Principal Scientist, H5

Dr. Mireille Hildebrandt
Co-Director, PI ERC ADG COHUBICOL; Co-Editor in Chief CRCL
Radboud University, Nijmegen
Senior researcher to Law Science Technology and Society (LSTS)
Vrije Universiteit Brussels

Dr. Konstantinos Karachalios

Managing Director, IEEE-SA

Member, IEEE Management Council

Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE

Member of the U.K. House of Lords

Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee

Commissioner, UNESCO’s Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development

Member, UNESCO Working Group on Child Online Safety

Nicolas Miailhe

Founder & President, The Future Society

Paul Nemitz
Principal Adviser on Justice Policy in the European Commission and visiting Professor of Law at the College of Europe

Tuan Anh Nguyen

CEO of Boston Global Forum

Executive Director of Michael Dukakis Institute

Co-founder of AI World Society

Marietje Schaake

International Policy Director at the Cyber Policy Center

International Policy Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence

Stanford University

Former Member of European Parliament

Dr. Sarah Spiekermann
Chair, Institute for Information Systems & Society
Vienna University of Economics and Business

Alex Stamos

Director, Stanford Internet Observatory
Stanford University

Former chief security officer (CSO) at Facebook

Dr. Thomas Streinz
Adjunct Professor of Law

New York University School of Law

Wendell Wallach

Chair, Technology and Ethics Research Group
Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics

Calling for a Monitoring System to supervise abuses and violations by Governments and Big Tech to the Social Contract for the AI Age and AI International Accord

Moving into a new age of technological advancements brings promising potential to world society as Artificial Intelligence becomes a public good used to promote the better well-being of all people. But alongside the opportunities Artificial Intelligence and other technologies have to offer, we also face a threat from private and public entities who aim to exploit the use of these advancements abusing the rights of individuals and the rule of law. AI technologies raise concerns about security, privacy, and fairness in a democratic society.

This phenomenon is not just something we envision in the coming future, but already a practice today both in the public and private sphere.

In order to protect the rights, privacy, and security of all people, a monitoring system must be implemented to supervise actions that violate the rights and security of individuals in democratic values and keep abusers accountable for their actions. A monitor system is of great importance to create a safe environment where there is trust that private and public entities do not take control of personal data through the use of AI for their own means.

Those that misuse their power must face the penalties that come with non-compliance to the norms, standards, common values, and international laws as outlined in the Social Contract for the AI Age and Artificial Intelligence International Accords (AIIA).

Already, Freedom House and other organizations are in place to monitor policies and behaviors in other spheres, but they lack formal authority. The Michael Dukakis Institute can provide a monitoring system to the best of its ability, they must be well structured, staffed, and funded to ensure legitimacy and authority on their assessments and judgments.

The time to implement and support a monitoring system is now as entities already have the capability to infringe on the lives of millions in the world. The cooperation of governments, big corporations, and civil society is of most importance in this time of evolving advancements. Through the implementation of a monitoring system, we can ensure that fundamental human rights, the rule of law, and Social Contract for the AI Age, AI International Accord will be protected in the international community.

Six Of The Smartest Applications Of Artificial Intelligence In Business

With its widespread use in customer service, manufacturing and quality control, artificial intelligence has secured its place as one of the most important technologies of the future. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, nearly 90% of CEOs confirmed that AI is considered mainstream technology in their offices in 2021.

Businesses that want to figure out how to best leverage AI can experiment with unique ways of using it. With the right team members in place, and through a process of trial and error, a company can track the results of AI initiatives and find out what works best for its specific needs. Below, six experts from Forbes Coaches Council examine some most innovative uses of AI in business that they’ve encountered.

Assisting People With Disabilities

One of the smartest uses of AI is adapting computers to assist people with disabilities in doing their jobs.

Resolving Common Queries

A great use of AI involves resolving common queries in industries such as financial services and telecommunications through self-service or self-help processes.

Reducing Bias In Hiring Decisions

Any AI that can automate and streamline routine tasks in order to optimize the performance of your people is of tremendous value.

Enabling Everyday Marketing Applications

One of the best uses of AI in business is the everyday marketing that is all around us. This clever type of marketing can be used to quantify your business.

Creating Systems For Coaching Discussions

Although it is in its infancy, I have been watching how companies are creating systems to use AI in coaching discussions.

Enabling The Early Detection Of Certain Diseases

AI has many fascinating facets. It is still a nascent technology, but significant leaps for mankind have already been made with it.

The article was originally posted at Forbes.

To support for AI positive development in business and society, Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI) and Boston Global Forum (BGF) has established Artificial Intelligence World Society Innovation Network (AIWS.net). In this effort, MDI and BGF invite participation and collaboration with governments, think tanks, universities, non-profits, firms, and other entities that share its commitment to the constructive and development of full-scale AI for world society. This initiative is to develop positive AI for helping people achieve well-being and happiness, relieve them of resource constraints and arbitrary/inflexible rules and processes, and solve important issues, such as SDGs.

The United Nations Centennial Goals: solutions and actions to shape the world by 2045

The brief of goals of the United Nations Centennial – Boston Global Forum and United Nations Academic Impact Initiative are:

Politics and international relations:

– Building standards and values in politics and societies based on the Social Contract for the AI Age.

– Establishing a system of nations that meet the standards of the Social Contract for the AI Age.

– AI, the digital sphere, and the Internet assist citizens in decision-making in politics and societies.

– Developing an effective mechanism to keep and maintain peace and security around the world.

– Strengthening international courts so that they are strong enough to judge and enforce decisions on any governments or corporations.

Economy:

– A system of innovative values, which encourages people to engage with these values. AIWS City contributes to the AIWS Values System as an innovative values system.

– The People Centered Economy: every individual can create values for others and society.

– A new financial system with AI, Blockchain, Digital

– A global business system, which respects and supports standards of Social Contract for the AI Age.

– Classifying nations that have economies that meet standards of Social Contract for the AI Age and AIWS Values.

Education:

– Equality of opportunity in education for every citizen in the world. Every person can access and study a standard program. AIWS City contributes to the AIWS Citizen Program.

Culture:

– A culture and ethics of honesty, sincerity, tolerance, and responsibilities.

These are suggestions to create a path to 2045, a beautiful path for humanity.

The United Nations Centennial calls for discussions and contributions toward ideas and solutions in creating a path, to shape and remake the world in 2045 – the Global Age of Enlightenment.