The Cooperation Forum on Artificial Intelligence (FCAI) has explored the opportunities and barriers for international cooperation to foster the development of responsible artificial intelligence (AI). It brought together representatives from seven governments (Australia, Canada, European Union, Japan, Singapore, United Kingdom and United States) with experts from industry, academia and civil society to explore similarities and differences in national AI policies, pathways for international cooperation, AI research and development (R&D) ecosystems and AI standards development, among others. Following a series of roundtables in 2020 and 2021, we published a progress report in October 2021 explaining why international cooperation is particularly necessary when it comes to AI. , identified significant challenges for such cooperation and proposed four key areas where international cooperation could deepen: regulatory alignment, standards development, trade agreements and joint R&D. The report made 15 recommendations on how to move forward in these areas.
For joint R&D, Recommendation R15 of the progress report called for the development of “common criteria and governance arrangements for large-scale international AI R&D projects”, with the Human Genome Project (HGP) and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) as examples. of the necessary scale and ambition. The report summarizes this recommendation as follows:
“Joint research and development applied to large-scale global problems such as climate change or disease prevention and treatment can have two valuable effects: they can bring additional resources to the solution of pressing global challenges, and collaboration can help find common ground in addressing differences in approaches to AI FCAI will seek to incubate a concrete roadmap on such R&D for adoption by FCAI participants as well as other governments and international organizations Using R&D collaboration as a mechanism to address issues that affect international AI policy cooperation means that this recommendation should materialize in the short term.
FCAI has convened a roundtable on February 10, 2022 to explore specific use cases that may be candidates for joint international research and development and inform the selection and design of these projects based on the criteria outlined below. Potential areas considered were climate change, public health, privacy technologies for data sharing, and improving monitoring of economic growth and performance (economic measurement). This working document summarizes the discussions and our analysis and research. We recommend that FCAI governments, stakeholders, and other like-minded entities prioritize cooperative R&D efforts on (1) the deployment of AI as a tool for monitoring and managing climate change and (2) accelerating the development and adoption of privacy enhancing technologies (PET).
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