This week, all the member states of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), a total of 193 countries, signed an important document that includes a common agreement to strengthen, clearly and perfectly defined, a “healthy” development of artificial intelligence.
It is a fact that, in recent years, artificial intelligence has become one of the most important technological assets in the world. However, its enormous potential is also accompanied by many doubts, and also many ethical issues which, unfortunately, are not at all easy to solve. This is precisely where this UNESCO agreement comes into play, as its main objective is to prevent an “inappropriate” use of artificial intelligence.
This agreement not only seeks to prevent the development and use of artificial intelligence for criminal purposes, but also the creation of AI models that have other purposes that, even though they are not criminals in the strict sense, they may turn out to be ethically despicable. In this sense, UNESCO highlighted that the technology with the greatest potential, and with the greatest impact that has arrived in recent years, has already caused significant damage that goes beyond that idea of criminality, and that contributed to generating prejudices both racially as gender.
According to UNESCO, until now there was no set of universal values that would serve as a guide for human beings to determine, in a broad sense, the framework on which all developments and implementations of artificial intelligence should be situated, and that precisely this document that the 193 Member States have signed has been created with the objective of occupying that place, position yourself as a benchmark.
Audrey Azoulay, Director General of UNESCO, commented:
“The world needs rules for artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. The AI Ethics Recommendation is an important response to that urgent need. Establishes the world’s first regulatory framework, Iit gives States the responsibility to apply it. UNESCO will support its 193 member states to achieve such implementation, and will ask them to report regularly on their progress and practices.
It is a totally voluntary adhesion agreement, the fulfillment of which remains, in the end, in the hands of each Member State. If any of them does not comply with the principles set out in said agreement, there will not be, in principle, no type of consequence or sanction. To understand this, it is enough to remember that countries like China have signed this document, and that this country uses artificial intelligence to create mass surveillance and social control systems.
