Baroness Joanna Shields, Multi-stakeholder Expert Group Plenary Chair and GPAI Steering Committee Co-Chair outlines the key issues to be addressed at the Artificial Intelligence Summit to be held in Paris on 11 and 12 November. More specifically, she highlights the considerable body of work already completed by the working groups.
“Thanks to our collective efforts, I’m confident that we are well on our way to a world in which trustworthy AI is implemented ethically and responsibly as part of our everyday lives”. These are the words with which Baroness Joanna Shields, Multi-stakeholder Expert Group Plenary Chair and GPAI Steering Committee Co-Chair, prefaces her introduction to the ambitions of this year’s Summit just a few days before its opening session.
The working groups she chairs have begun work on a range of projects to demonstrate that AI can have a positive impact on our lives and help us create a better world. “A world in which society is served by technology, and not the other way around”, says Baroness Joanna Shields, who believes, for example, that the potential for AI to be used in response to the COVID-19 pandemic can create an enabling environment for new drug discovery, which is precisely what the GPAI AI and Pandemic Response Working Group is working on. She also believes that AI has the potential to contribute to combating climate change and protecting global biodiversity, as well as facilitating better working conditions and protecting innovation and intellectual property.
“All these examples, to highlight just a few, make it clear that we’ve come a long way together in a short period of time. Nevertheless, we live in a world where AI is increasingly funded and implemented with no effective framework in place to govern or regulate its ultimate application. The work we’re doing within GPAI is focused on moving towards a world in which AI can remove boundaries and break down divisions, rather than create them”, she continues. So at this year’s summit, GPAI stakeholders will explore ways in which efforts can be focused on practical actions to avoid AI repeating the human mistakes of the past, thereby perpetuating inequalities.
“Together, we have the opportunity to set important goals that we can work towards, and I for one am very excited about what this year’s Summit has in store for us”, concludes the GPAI Steering Committee Co-Chair.
