AIWS Weekly - Week of April 05, 2021

PROFESSOR NAZLI CHOUCRI WILL PRESENT THE FRAMEWORK FOR AI INTERNATIONAL ACCORD ON APRIL 28

The United Nations Academic Impact, Boston Global Forum, and Michael Dukakis Institute will organize the UN Centennial Roundtable “AI International Accord” on April 28. This roundtable will address:

1. Fundamentals of the framework for AI International Accord,
2. Processs to build AIIA
3. Mechanisms to implement AIIA, and
4. Supports of governments, international organizations, and
companies and firms to acknowledge, buttress, and enable this international accord.

Professor Nazli Choucri, MIT, Member of AIWS City’s Board of Leaders, will present the Framework for AI International Accord v1.0 at the UN Centennial Roundtable.

In 2018, Governor Michael Dukakis called for an international accord for AI and, over the last several years, there has been steady progress toward this goal. The Boston Global Forum put forward the Social Contract for the AI Age and AI World Society initiative.

On December 12, 2020, at the Boston Global Forum and Michael Dukakis Institute Ceremony to honor EU Commission President von der Leyen as World Leader for Peace and Security Award, and introduce the AI International Accord Initiative, she called for an EU-US Transatlantic Accord on AI. She emphasized “global standards aligned with our values: Human rights, and pluralism, inclusion and the protection of privacy.”. Then at the Munich Security Conference in February, President Biden called for AI rules that “lift people up.” It was a powerful statement.

TECHNOLOGY: A PATH TOWARDS A MORE COLLABORATIVE WORLD ORDER?

AIWS introduces the article by Shatrughna Sinha Deputy, Consul General of India, New York, on the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs to discuss. Below are some key messages of his article:

As countries look towards developing new frameworks of cooperation in global digital governance, there are also some apprehensions. A genuine fear about AI is that capital-rich countries will benefit more, and labor-rich countries will suffer as jobs shift towards automation. It is true that developed countries have an advantage, as innovation tends to benefit countries that have an abundance of intellectual capital. Some of the biggest companies in the world today either operate on digital platforms or deal in digital technologies. While the innovators and investors have made huge profits and those with high skills have benefitted, there is a crisis at the lower-skill end of the spectrum. Until the time when low-skilled labor in advanced countries shifts to higher skills required in the new world technology industry, wages are likely to stagnate. This is likely to amplify inequities in developed societies as well.

…..

CAN INDO-U.S. TECHNOLOGY COLLABORATION
EMERGE AS A MODEL FOR THE WORLD?

Technology cooperation between India and the United States could be a great example of how countries from the Global South can collaborate with advanced countries in the development of data-driven technologies. Both countries have worked closely on multilateral platforms on confidence building measures, capacity building, and norm-setting in cyberspace. India and the United States signed a Cyber Framework in August 2016 and have since had multiple consultations on digital technologies and cyberspace. This framework of cooperation has led to cooperation in the fields of law enforcement, capacity building, computer emergency response cooperation as well as cooperation in the field of testing and standards. Both countries
have also worked closely on multilateral platforms on norms of state behavior and confidence building measures in the cyber sphere.The complementarities between the two countries are obvious. While the United States is the most advanced cyber power, India is the largest digital democracy in the world. The technology industry in the United States is powered by the talent and hard work of Indian engineers.

At the same time, India’s IT services industry is reliant on U.S. clients. The booming digital platform economy in India has attracted significant investments from American behemoths like Walmart and Facebook. The strong base for this cyber-cooperation is provided by the shared values of freedom and democracy.

The full article can be read and downloaded here.

THIS WEEK IN THE HISTORY OF AI AT AIWS.NET - DEEP BLUE VERSUS GARRY KASPAROV

This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net - IBM “Deep Blue” machine defeats Garry Kasparov, the then-reigning World Chess Champion, at chess, in a highly-publicised match on 11 May, 1997. This date was the conclusion of 2 matches, one starting the year before, 1996.

The face-off began on February 10, 1996, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Kasparov actually won this match 4-2. A year later in New York City, they would actually rematch, where Deep Blue defeated Kasparov 3.5-2.5. This rematch hosted a newer version of Deep Blue, dubbed “Deeper Blue”, that was upgraded after the first match. Deep Blue would also play against two other chess grandmasters. This battle was the subject of documentaries and talked about long after the match ended. It was speculated that the match was rigged in favour of IBM to boost their stocks.

IBM “Deep Blue” had its origins in a project by students at Carnegie Mellon University under the name ChipTest. It was later rebranded to Deep Thought. After these students graduated from Carnegie Mellon, they were asked by IBM to continue their research at the company. In 1989, it was renamed to Deep Blue after a competition. The machine was also helped in development by chess grandmaster Joel Benjamin. Deep Blue was released in 1996. After its rematch with Kasparov in 1997, it was dismantled. Its racks are held at the National Museum of American History and the Computer History Museum.

The HAI initiative considers this an event in the History of AI due to its impact on public perceptions of Artificial Intelligence. Similar to IBM’s public stunt with Jeopardy, this was also a display of the progress that AI has come from its heydays and origins in the 1960s.

SPEECH BY CHAIRMAN OF VIET NAM NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION OF TOURISM AT THE UNITED NATIONS CENTENNIAL ROUNDTABLE

Mr. Nguyen Trung Khanh, Chairman of Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism, highlights some key factors in developing Phan Thiet and NovaWorld Phan Thiet at the UN Centennial “A Distinguished City to honor the UN’s first century”:

We can say that Phan Thiet has all the basic elements to develop MICE tourism. However, as we all know, MICE tourism is a type of high-end tourism with many distinctive features and high requirements of professionalism. To become a large MICE travel center, we need to pay attention to the following factors:

Firstly, it is necessary to quickly invest in upgrading facilities and venues with large capacity, enabling with high-tech facilities and technology so they can host large-scale and professional events and conferences. Besides, it is also necessary to invest in quality infrastructure, in research and applying modern technology (application of artificial intelligence – AIWS City – as you have discussed – is an impressive initiative).

GOVERNOR MICHAEL DUKAKIS WILL PRESENT THE AIWS LEADERSHIP MASTER LECTURE FOR SAINT PETERSBURG STUDENTS

On April 15, 2021, Governor Michael Dukakis, co-founder and Chairman of the Boston Global Forum, co-founder of AI World Society (AIWS), will present the lecture “How to become a charismatic leader in the AI Age.” This lecture is a part of the AIWS Leadership Master Program at Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University (ETU ”LETI”).

Together with Governor Michael Dukakis, Mr. Nguyen Anh Tuan, CEO of the Boston Global Forum, co-founder of AIWS, will highlight to students visions of AIWS and how to inspire global citizens and leaders to contribute and support the Social Contract for the AI Age, AI International Accord.

Social Contract for the AI Age as “TCP/IP” to connect governments. World Leadership Alliance-Club de Madrid launched the report and press release call leaders, governments endorse and apply this Social Contract. This is the first Social Contract in the age of AI, Internet, and Digital. The framework for AI International Accord (AIIA) is a follow-up of the Social Contract for the AI Age. The framework is designed to build the AI World Society (AIWS) and to meet the goals of the United Nations Centennial Initiative -- as articulated by the United Nations Academic Impact and the Boston Global Forum.

VINT CERF HOUSE AT AIWS CITY AND NOVAWORLD PHAN THIET WILL BE OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED IN JANUARY 2022

The Vint Cerf House will include these sections:

Inventing the Internet

At Google

The Internet today and tomorrow

People Centered-Economy at AIWS City and Vint Cerf in AI and Digital Age

Library

Historical photos, pictures, videos, films, objects, articles.

Vint Cerf’s quotes

News stories about Vint Cerf.

Books about and by Vint Cerf

Correspondence from and to Vint Cerf

Speeches and talks of Vint Cerf

Lectures of Vint Cerf

Merits, Honors, and Awards

Family and friends

Research about Vint Cerf and about his achievements.

CAUSAL REPRESENTATION IS NOW GETTING ITS DUE IMPORTANCE IN MACHINE LEARNING

Bernhard Scholkopf and Stefan Bauer from Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems; Francesco Locatello and Nal Kalchbrenner as Google researchers; Yoshua Bengio, Nan Rosemary Ke, and Anirudh Goyal from Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (Mila) came together for research.
The research paper titled “Towards Causal Representation Learning” provides the way through which the artificial intelligent systems can learn causal representations and how the absence of the same in machine learning algorithms and models is giving rise to challenges in front of us.

Let’s look at the causal relations between different elements while observing the girl on the horse trying to jump over a barrier. We can clearly observe that the girl, the horse, and the motion of their bodies are in unison. The girl is pulling the horse’s collar with her hands in order to jump over. Similarly, we as humans should think about cases, like what would happen if the horse’s legs hit the barrier? What if the collar around the horse’s neck slipped away from the girl’s hand? These are counterfactuals, and it’s natural to think this way too. We have observed things around us from childhood, learned from nature, and looked out for every other possibility associated with an event. This is the basic intuitive nature of a human being.

However, various machine learning algorithms can execute complex tasks, identify patterns from huge databases, play chess, discover new molecules at a lightning-fast speed. But they fail to make simple causal inferences which we have made out while observing the picture above.

The AI researchers have compiled a list of concepts and principles that can help develop causal machine learning models in their research paper. The two concepts adopted, namely — the structural causal model and the independent causal model. The basic idea behind the models adopted is that instead of relying too much on fixed correlations between sets of data, or the instructions fed, AI systems should have the capability to register causal variables, and understand their effects on the environment, separately.

Regarding to AI and Causal Inference, Professor Judea Pearl is a distinguished pioneer for developing a theory of causal and counterfactual inference based on structural models. In 2011, Professor Pearl won the Turing Award. In 2020, Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI) and Boston Global Forum (BGF) also awarded Professor Pearl as World Leader in AI World Society (AIWS). At this moment, Professor Judea is a Mentor of AIWS.net and Head of Modern Causal Inference section, which is one of important AIWS.net.