WESF plays a role in promoting standardization and eliminating global trade barriers.
How can artificial intelligence (AI) be governed for humanity? The United Nations Secretary General High-Level Advisory Body on AI proposes an AI standards exchange as a key recommendation to empower coordination and tackle global AI risks in its report released this month.
“Governing AI for Humanity” is based on insights from more than 2,000 participants across regions of the globe, highlighting AI’s transformative potential and outlining principles that will guide the formation of new international AI governance institutions.
Notably, the report outlines a blueprint for addressing AI-related risks, including calling on all governments and stakeholders to work together in governing AI to foster development and protection of human rights. Among the key recommendations for global AI governance, the advisory board recommends an AI standards exchange, as noted on page 55 of the report.
“We recommend the creation of an AI standards exchange, bringing together representatives from national and international standard-development organizations, technology companies, civil society and representatives from the international scientific panel. It would be tasked with:
developing and maintaining a register of definitions and applicable standards for measuring and evaluating AI systems;
debating and evaluating the standards and the processes for creating them; and
identifying gaps where new standards are needed.”
Framework recommendations suggest more coordination to address gaps in current AI governance arrangements. To inform the report (that builds on the interim report released in December 2023), the Advisory Body commissioned an “AI Risk Global Pulse Check”–the most comprehensive global horizon scanning exercise on AI risks to date–and an AI Opportunity Scan to crowdsource expert assessments of emerging AI trends, the UN reports.