New policy paper by foraus: Making Sense of Artificial Intelligence

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a general-purpose technology that is expected to transform almost all industries and has sharply risen on the global political agenda in recent years. In this policy paper we pro- vide a brief overview of initiatives and issues in the global governance of AI. We particularly highlight gaps in the operationalization of ethical principles, the monitoring and forecasting of technical progress, global participation, and the development of a shared long-term vision for AI. Subsequently, we introduce the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a potential governance model to address some of these gaps and look at how this framework could be adapted to the context of AI. Specifically, we suggest that such an organiza- tion should be integrated into the United Nations, with government nominated scientists, three main working groups, regular reporting duties, qualified majority voting as well as measures for institutional flexibility.

In the last part, we look at concrete steps that Switzerland can take to strengthen the global governance of AI and help to establish an “IPCC for AI”. This could either work through developing the Franco-Canadian proposal of a Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) in that direction or a new initiative in partnership with the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG). Our recommendations here particularly focus on strengthening Geneva as a neutral digital governance hub. Specifically, we recommend to 1) initiate a federal AI strategy, 2) cre- ate an International Geneva task force, 3) appoint a tech ambassador, 4) actively express interest to help design the GPAI, 5) offer Geneva as a host city for GPAI activities and 6) encourage UNOG to set up AI-specific institutions in Geneva.”

The main conclusions of the paper echo some of  the findings and recommendations of the articles and  papers written by Regina Surber and Barbara Weekes on behalf of ICT4Peace and the Zurich Hub for Ethics and Technology (ZHET):