CAIDP - CAHAI APPROVES FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR AI LEGAL STANDARDS

The third plenary session of the CAHAI, an expert group on AI policy, took place this week. [Meeting report.] The CAHAI (the “Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence”) was established by the Committee of Ministers in 2019 to examine the feasibility of a new legal instrument based on the Council of Europe’s (COE) standards on human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
 
This week the CAHAI published Toward Regulation of AI Systems and convened a panel to discuss Democratic Governance of AI. The CAHAI report explored global perspectives on the development of AI legal frameworks, and highlighted recent developments in Israel, Mexico, and Japan. The report emphasized that the COE has “a crucial role to play to ensure that Artificial Intelligence (AI) complies with the Organisation's standards on human rights, democracy and the rule of law.”
 
The Council of Europe is a leader in the realm of international legal instruments and human rights. All Council of Europe member states have signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights. And Article 8 of that Convention has done much to shape modern privacy law. COE Conventions are also open for ratification by non-member state. The original COE Convention on Privacy (Convention 108) was ratified by 56 countries.
 
A key outcome from the December 2020 meeting of the CAHAI was the approval of the Feasibility Study on AI Legal Standards. The Feasibility Study will soon be published online.
 
The COE also announced an online event on 20 January 2021 "Human Rights in the Age of AI - Europe as an International Standard Setter for AI," organised with the support of the Council of Europe.

In CAIDP Update 1.17 (Oct. 31, 2020) we reported that the COE Parliamentary Assembly adopted a Resolution on the Need for Democratic Governance of Artificial Intelligence.  The Assembly called for “strong and swift action” by the Council of Europe. The parliamentarians warned that “soft-law instruments and self-regulation have proven so far not sufficient in addressing these challenges and in protecting human rights, democracy and rule of law.”

Marc Rotenberg, Director
Center for AI and Digital Policy at the Michael Dukakis Institute
The Center for AI and Digital Policy, founded in 2020, advises governments on technology policy.

THIS WEEK IN THE HISTORY OF AI AT AIWS.NET - THE ALVEY PROGRAMME WAS LAUNCHED BY THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net - the Alvey Programme was launched by the British government in 1983. It is a project developed in response to Japan’s own Fifth Generation Computer project. There was no specific focus or directive, but rather the program was to support research in knowledge engineering in the UK.

Originally, the UK was invited to Japan’s FGP, and they created a committee chaired by John Alvey, a technology director at British Telecom. In the end, they rejected Japan’s invitation and formed the Alvey Programme. John Alvey was not involved in this initiative itself though.

This project was created in response to Japan’s Fifth Generation Computer program, funded by the Japanese Ministry of Trade and Industry in 1982. The goal of this program was to create computers with massively parallel computing and logic programming and to propel Japan to the top spots in advanced technology. This will then create a platform for future developments in AI. By the time of the program’s end, the opinion of it was mixed, divided between considering it a failure or ahead of its time.

Another program that rivalled the Alvey Programme was America’s Strategic Computing Initiative, founded in 1983 after the first AI winter in the 70s. The initiative supported projects that helped develop machine intelligence, from chip design to AI software. The DoD spent a total of 1 billion USD (not adjusted for inflation) before the program’s shutdown in 1993. Although the initiative failed to reach its overarching goals, specific targets were still met.

Although the results of the Alvey Programme and other computer and AI projects (Fifth Generation and SCI) in the 80s were mixed, they helped bring funding back to AI development after the first AI winter in the 70s. The History of AI marks the Alvey Programme as an important event in AI due to its marker in AI development in the 1980s.

THE QUAD GROUP, AIWS SOCIAL CONTRACT AND SOLUTIONS FOR WORLD PEACE AND SECURITY

On December 19, 2020, Governor Michael Dukakis lead the publication of the Quad Roundtable Report.

The role of the Social Contract for the AI Age in such a situation is to eliminate all negative risks and enhance all benefits such technological advancement could bring, protect democratic values, and maintain peace and security in the world.

First, it is necessary to mend not only the differences amongst the Western allies, such as different views of interests, social perceptions, and the role of the Western alliance in the United States, but also to reestablish US international leadership.

Second, the common interest of the Quad is an open Indo-Pacific region.

Third, while addressing possibilities and challenges brought about by artificial intelligence, US leadership must consider the interconnectivity of different types of interests in the Indo-Pacific region. The Quad have role to ask China respect its neighbours and do not create tensions in the Indo-Pacific region, China needs to respect democracy in Hong Kong, and the Quad have solutions to solve threats from China.

Norms, standards, and democratic values from the Social Contract for the AI Age is a fundamental for the Quad Group in maintaining world peace and security, and recognizing threats from nations and regimes that undermine these values.  

Authors of the Report are Dr. Sandis Šrāders, Fellow, Baltic Defence College and Board Member, Latvian Transatlantic Organization, Professor Nazli Choucri, MIT, the Boston Global Forum’s Board Member, Nguyen Anh Tuan, CEO of the Boston Global Forum, Ambassador P.S Raghavan, Chairman of the National Security Advisory Board of India.

The Quad Roundtable at the Riga Conference 2020 is very successful. The next Quad Roundtable will be organized on the AIWS Palace at AIWS City.

Ambassador P.S Raghavan, Chair of National Security Advisory Board, India:
I warmly welcome the initiative of the Boston Global Forum to launch discussions between representatives of the US, India, Japan and Australia on the Quad dialogue of the four countries. The Quad Roundtable highlighted the perspectives of each of the countries on the Quad, shaped by its geography, historical experiences, economic circumstances and political aspirations.

PREDICTIONS FOR AI IN 2021

Artificial intelligence has expanded its grip on our lives throughout the past year. Even as a global pandemic forced many data scientists to work from their homes, AI-driven innovations continued to pour from the smartest minds everywhere.

AI is a centerpiece of the coming “new normal” in all our lives. Going forward, AI will be the intelligent nucleus of automated, robotic, and contactless processes that will protect us all from future outbreaks. With the COVID-19 crisis still in full sway, here are my predictions for the specific AI techniques, tooling, platforms, and apps that will come to the forefront in the year to come:

• Automated governance will become key for controlling AI applications
• Adversarial attacks will require countermeasures to protect the AI-driven economy
• Edge-based AI will crunch neural networks down to their essence:
• Facial recognition will become a dominant AI-based contactless authentication technology: Authenticated AI is imperative. In 2021, enterprises will implement facial recognition for strong authentication in a growing range of internal and customer-facing applications. By the same token, business will increasingly avoid using the technology to inference identity, race, gender, and other attributes that might be sensitive from a privacy, bias, or surveillance standpoint. To the extent that businesses incorporate facial recognition in image/video auto-tagging, query-by-image, and other such applications, it will only be after extensive review by legal counsel. The regulatory sensitivity of this technology, and the legal risks, will only grow for the foreseeable future.
• Robotics will bring reinforcement learning into AI’s mainstream
• Deepfake technology will infuse a new generation of AI-based media-prep tools
• Quantum computing will find its first compelling AI application:

As we turn the corner into 2021, we’ll also have a new administration in place at the White House, a fact that will shape these AI-industry trends that we can’t yet fully foresee.
Early indications are that online content authenticity, especially in election campaigns, will become a key priority for the Biden administration, and this may drive further private sector investment in the AI needed to ensure this. Beyond that, it’s unclear how, if at all, the next administration will deviate from the AI regulation principles proposed by the outgoing administration, or how all of this will drive the federal government’s fiscal, regulatory, or legislative initiatives relevant to this technology.

To support AI positive development for society, the Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI) established the Artificial Intelligence World Society (AIWS.net) for the purpose of promoting ethical norms and practices in the development and use of AI. To support for AI technology and application development, MDI and AIWS.net has developed AIWS Ethics and Practice Index to measure the ethical values and help people achieve well-being and happiness, as well as solve important issues, such as SDGs. In this effort, Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI) invites participation and collaboration with think tanks, universities, non-profits, firms, and other entities that share its commitment to the constructive and development of full-scale AI for world society.