Paris AI Action Summit Day 2: US & UK Refuse To Sign Global Declaration Backed By 60 Countries

The Artificial Intelligence Action Summit AKA Paris AI Summit, which was held on February 10 and 11 at the Grand Palais Museum in Paris, has concluded.

Where most AI summits focus on the more morose aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, this one took a more positive approach, drawing in people from over 100 countries. This included delegates, government leaders, business executives, academic and research scholars, representatives of civil society, and more.

The conference was co-hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, both of whom had plenty to say about the technology and how its progress should be directed.

While Macron delivered most of his thoughts on Day 1, Modi captured the headlines on Day 2.

“AI can help transform millions of lives by improving health, education, agriculture and so much more,” said Modi. “It can help create a world in which the journey to Sustainable Development Goals becomes easier and faster. To do this, we must develop open-source systems that enhance trust and transparency.”

As PM Modi highlighted AI’s transformative powers, he also underscored the need to eradicate bias in AI while instilling comprehensive governance and democratizing AI.

“We must build quality data sets, free from biases. We must democratize technology and create people-centric applications. We must address concerns related to cybersecurity, disinformation, and deepfakes. We must also ensure that technology is rooted in local ecosystems for it to be effective and useful,” added Modi.


AI biases come in when an AI tool has been trained excessively using data that doesn’t represent real-world scenarios, which results in prejudiced, stereotypical, or unequal outputs. 

PM Modi shared an interesting observation in this regard—if an AI tool is asked to generate an image of someone writing with their left hand, it cannot!

Instead, it generates an image where the person is writing with their right hand.

We tried this theory out in the most popular generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tool in the market—OpenAI’s ChatGPT—using the prompt “Draw a person writing with their left hand.” It generated a person writing with their right hand.

We refined the prompt to “Try again, the person should be writing with the pen, and the pen should be in the person's left hand.”

Same result.
 

While this bias exists, in case you absolutely need the image to have someone writing with their left hand, you can just flip the image horizontally. Providing there isn’t any text or other element that makes the flipping apparent.
 

This is one cornerstone of the conference—finding a common path for the advancement of AI technology and ensuring it’s developed in a safe, sustainable, and fair manner.

This resonated in European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s speech as well, where she said, “This summit is on action, and that is exactly what we need right now. The time has come for us to formulate a vision of where we want AI to take us as a society and as humanity, and then we need to act and accelerate Europe in getting there.”

“AI needs competition, but AI also needs collaboration, and AI needs the confidence of the people and has to be safe,” added von der Leyen.

“AI can be a gift to humanity, but we must make sure that its benefits are widespread and that its benefits are accessible to all.”

As a result, 58 countries signed a joint statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet at the summit, with the possibility of more countries signing later on.

These countries included Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Djibouti, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, Uruguay, and Vatican.

The agreement would see the “open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy” development of AI for all.

However, the international agreement was not signed by the United States or the United Kingdom.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance already vocalized his concern about heavy regulations imposed by the EU, a move that could kill AI’s true development and bring in “authoritarian censorship.”

“Of course, we want to ensure the internet is a safe place, but it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet, and it is something quite different to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation,” said Vance.

A U.K. spokesperson said the agreement lacked clarity on the technology’s impact on national security and had not addressed the global governance of AI, saying, “We agreed with much of the leaders’ declaration and continue to work closely with our international partners. This is reflected in our signing of agreements on sustainability and cybersecurity today at the Paris AI Action Summit.”

“However, we felt the declaration didn’t provide enough practical clarity on global governance, nor sufficiently address harder questions around national security and the challenge AI poses to it.”

Do you think the international framework set in place by the 58 signatories is vital to the responsible development of AI technology or do you think there should be no bars for its growth?

Let us know in the comments below!