 The United Nations Academic Impact and Boston Global Forum officially launched their “Remaking the world – The Age of Global Enlightenment” e-book on May 27th, 2021, with ideas, and solutions to reshape the world to become peaceful, prosperous, secure as we move towards an age of global enlightenment.
In opening remarks of the event, Mr. Ramu Damodaran, Chief of United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) and co-Chair of the United Nations Centennial BGF and UNAI Initiative, reminds us to “never think of the destination of your journey, think about the travel” as we make our mark towards an age of Artificial Intelligence and technology. In this journey, the E-book is a significant step, paving the way for advancements in digital international governance.
Conversations among the contributors to the e-book highlighted key aspects of the initiative, from the need for an alliance of like-minded individuals, to stressing the importance of education in promoting AI in the next decades.
Alex Sandy Pentland went in detail on his contributions to the e-book as well as urged for a change in the SDG 2030 goals to move towards a more positive light. By improving the SDG 2030 goals, Pentland hopes the world would improve access to opportunity, which would then in turn help reach the UN Centennial’s goals.
Former Bosnia-Herzegovina Prime Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija who expressed the need for global leaders in this enterprise towards a global enlightenment to support such initiatives like the e-book and the Social Contract for the AI Age. He also presents the idea of an International Artificial Intelligence Agency (IAIA) as a proper governance structure to enforce the initiatives and strengthen their impact in a world of social change. The prime minister hopes that AI World Society will move from being an initiative to becoming a doctrine to solidify this undertaking in world society.
“Now I see that AIWS that include seven-layer models, Social Contract for the AI Age, Framework for Artificial Intelligence International Accord, concept of new economy and finance system, AIWS values and AIWS city, it can be concluded based on those things, that we did in such a short period, became a doctrine for something which can be called remaking the world in the age of global enlightenment”
“If we want to make a difference, if we want to make pressure on decision-makers, we have to connect as much as possible, something in which I call in a broad scale, an alliance with like-minded entities”
Distinguished leaders and thinkers that also have contribute contents for the book include: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, EU President Ursula von der Leyen, Speaker of Swedish Parliament Andreas Norlen, Secretay-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, Father of the Internet Vint Cerf, Professor Judea Pearl, Professor Alex Sandy Pentland, Professor Joseph Nye, Professor Thomas Patterson, Professor Nazli Choucri, Mr. Nguyen Anh Tuan and many more.
The book “Remaking the world – the Age of Global Enlightenment” will delivered to readers on June 21, 2021.
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Nazli Choucri presented the AIWS’s Framework for the Artificial Intelligence International Accord, another contribution to the e-book “Remaking the World – The Age of Global Enlightenement”, at the launching this book. She urges that we must keep up with the rate of change from technology, putting our ideas into actions. This is the first initiative to build the framework for the Artificial Intelligence International Accord.
Joint Committee of Boston Global Forum and Club de Madrid in building the Framework for “Artificial Intelligence International Accord” include: Professor Nazli Choucri, MIT, Professor Alex Sandy Pentland, MIT, Professor Thomas Patterson, Harvard Kennedy School, Tuan Nguyen, CEO of the Boston Global Forum, President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Prime Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija, Paul Nemitz, Japanese State Minister of Defense Yasuhide Nakayama.
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This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net - the World Leadership Alliance Club de Madrid organized the Online Roundtable “A New Social Contract in the Age of AI” on May 12, 2020.
The Roundtable was organized by the WLA-CdM in conjunction with Boston Global Forum. Panelists of the roundtable included professors and former head of states and governments. Members include the authors of the Social Contract 2020 - Thomas Patterson, Nazli Choucri, Alex Pentland, David Silbersweig, and Nguyen Anh Tuan. The full working title of this was “The Social Contract 2020, A New Social Contract in the Age of AI”.
This roundtable, albeit happening just in the past year, is a contributing stone to the foundation and the road to the Social Contract 2020, which was released later that year. Thus, the HAI project considers this a milestone in the development of artificial intelligence, in broader society.
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On May 27, 2021 at the launching the book “Remaking the Wolrd – The Age of Global Enlightenment”, Professor Alex Sandy Pentland, MIT, Co-founder of AIWS.net, went in detail on his contributions to this e-book as well as urged for a change in the SDG 2030 goals to move towards a more positive light. By improving the SDG 2030 goals, Sandy hopes the world would improve access to opportunity, which would then in turn help reach the United Nations Centennial’s goals. He wrote:
During drafting of the Sustainable Development Goals I was part of the UN Secretary General’s “data revolution” team. It was clear that digital systems were proving to be a fundamental revolution in human development, and so it was important that the power of data and data analytics (including AI) be incorporated into the SDGs [1]. In the subsequent years this revolution has not stopped or even slowed down. The world is becoming ever more digital.
Today this revolution is no longer proceeding application by application and nation by nation. Instead, we are seeing a convergence from separate digital systems for each application and each nation to unified, all-purpose digital ledgers that handle finance, commerce, capital, and tax transactions across the globe. These new ledgers are also a natural home for and extension of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), and are being promoted by trade countries such as Singapore, Switzerland, and China as a safer and cheaper way to conduct business.
While the combination of many different types of transaction on government-sponsored platforms allows greater security and real-time auditing for fraud detection and instabilities, it also raises questions around governance and control. Consequently, there is an urgent need to achieve international consensus on standards and principles of governance, and this will be a critical issue for the UN and other multilateral organizations to address; we need a “digital Bretton Woods” accord to establish the rules of international digital interaction. My hope is that the 2030 UN development goals will incorporate universal deployment of such rules, and that by 2045 the digital world will have a safe, inclusive, accountable and balanced ecology of data and AI for everything from trade and finance to medical services and government.
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On May 27, 2021, at launching the book, Governor Michael Dukakis, Co-founder and Chair of Boston Global Forum, presented remarks, made a significant point that resonated with discussions, stating that we should “marry our thinkers with our doers”.
“That’s essentially why we’re here isn’t it? To see if we can marry our thinkers with our doers in a way that makes them thinker-doers. That it doesn’t isolate that knowledge in a corner in some place and make it something unusual, difficult and not applicable. And that’s the big challenge”.
He raised the role of the United Nations for global peace, security, and prosperity today and future.
Governor Michael Dukakis, Professor Thomas Patterson, and Mr. Nguyen Anh Tuan contributed a special chapter: using AI and Digital to innovate, reform politics and make a smart democracy.
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 Professor Thomas Patterson, Harvard Kennedy School, President of AIWS University, presented “Remaking the World: A Social Contract for the AI Age.” Here is his message:
While AI can do much good it can also do harm. AI entails risks, such as opaque decision-making, gender-based and other forms of discrimination, unwarranted intrusion in our private lives, and more. AI is making authoritarian regimes more durable. In the 1990s, the median life span of such regimes was roughly 10 years. Now it’s twice that long. A study by the Mass Mobilization Project found that the most durable authoritarian regimes are ones that utilize surveillance technology to track and control their people. Once people know that their government is tracking them, they become compliant.
Governments are not the only ones exploiting AI. So too, for example, are tech companies that manipulate people’s buying behavior and malicious actors who spread disinformation and discord.
Such concerns lead us to conclude that there is a need for a new social contract, one fitted to the AI age and that seeks to maximize the benefits of AI and minimize its exploitation. Without such guidelines, AI entails significant risks to the wellbeing of individuals and nations.
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