AI Governance

The difficulty of regulating AI due to its complex nature and rapid development leads to having various fragmented efforts in place but with no coherent legislation to govern and guide them. The current absence of regulations has led national, regional, and global institutions to come up with diverse guidelines to encourage responsible design and deployment of AI. Legislative efforts generally aim at striking a balance between security and development but remain fragmented. Regulation may lead to short-term economic losses; but long-term benefits from AI that is trustworthy, ethical, secure, humane, and standardised are foreseen to outweigh these.
 

We call for the collective task of fostering a global initiative for knowledge exchange and building consensus on key AI concepts, priorities, security and standards as a first step towards meaningful governance of AI. Current guidelines stand as sources of key values that should be integrated in AI efforts moving forward, such as security, openness and transparency, ethical deployment, the use of AI for sustainable development, instilling human-centred values into AI, and establishing co-accountability and shared responsibility.
 

Thus AE4AI Network puts an emphasis on:

• On AI governance, we encourage states to seek balance between data protection and data openness which is crucial for the successful development of AI. Efforts to regulate AI must not only be for risk management, but also for sustainable development. Global standards must be developed for both data and algorithms to help more equitable distribution of data, tools, technologies, and benefits for all societies.
   

• On building an AI ecosystem, there is a need to define and shape societies’ understanding of equitable AI implementation for individuals and organisations in recognition of the importance of knowledge- and awareness-building in empowering collective action for AI.
   

• On approaching AI regulations, we encourage the use of scenario-thinking and foresight-informed methods that could help identify the key drivers for short-term and long-term developments. By analysing these scenarios, we aim to establish frameworks, build partnerships, create common regulations, and cultivate common values.
   

Action Lines: 

Set up the Asia-Europe Policy Centre for AI Governance to:

• Organise a periodic exchange and report of state-of-the-art AI safety techniques;

• Perform analyses on the job tasks in which AI is likely to replace humans; 

• Publish policy briefs on insights and recommendations directed to regulators, focused on key insights: in AI safety, to determine the needs for our workforce capability development, curricula adaptation and higher education reinvention, as well as the specific needs for AI regulation, that our new reality will bring; 

• Organise awareness-building events that disseminate the policy briefs and facilitate the necessary multi-stakeholder discourse. 
   

AI Governance Coordinators:

• Prof Raphael WEUTS (Belgium), Visiting Professor of Artificial Intelligence, UC Leuven 

• Prof Robert BILLONES (The Philippines),  Full Professor and CEO, Intelligent Systems Innovation, De La Salle University Manila