AI regulations must be interoperable across nations, UK Minister

Artificial intelligence (AI) regulations cannot be developed solely in one country and have to come at a global level because AI is truly global in nature, Viscount Camrose, Minister for Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property, United Kingdom, said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a firechat session at the Global Partnership on AI Summit here, along with Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Camrose said, “Today anyway it is almost impossible for a cutting-edge AI system to be developed solely in one country. And, as a result all AI regulation has to at some level be global in nature, there’s going to be national requirements for AI regulation — defamations will always clearly have a way to tap around regulation. What is really going to be important is highly interoperable systems of AI regulation in future.”

He said it is important because we are developing a global ecosystem of mutually beneficial regulation that will keep us all safe, and that has to be a deeply inclusive system.

Camrose said that individual countries developing different regulations ‘wouldn’t work’.

“In my opinion, every nation that I get to speak to is in alignment on this…this is the direction that we need to get to. Whatever else we might wish for with all those nations, we have to be able to interoperate AI safely,” he added.

Hiroshi Yoshida, Vice-Minister for Policy Coordination, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan, also echoed and said, “It is very important to discuss in multi stakeholders approach then we need more countries to be involved in the discussions…we need more discussions with international organisations and forums, and also research institutes which can commit support the code of conduct…for transparency.”

Regarding India’s stand, Chandrasekhar agreed that it has to be a global process.

“This cannot be something that’s done by one group or another group, excluding somebody/ including somebody/ selectively. This has to be as broad a process as possible within of course reason…we can’t even believe for a minute that this is something which can wait. There has to be an urgency…I hope these processes (talks) lead to a final end point at Korea Safety Summit (on AI in May),” he said.

He said some rules or guidelines should be there in writing so that everyone can follow them.

“What is the end point is that we all have at least a piece of paper that goes from the abstractionism of current levels to something in more detail and say ‘fine 24/28 countries agree to the following 10 areas of regulation or principles of regulation or guidelines of regulation. If they come out of these conversations, we are making the right moves, we are travelling to a right direction…if we don’t, then we are just ourselves to blame, and then we would be playing ‘catch up’ with the phenomenon that will be very difficult to catch up,” Chandrasekhar added. The Hindu BusinessLine