By akademiotoelektronik, 02/05/2022

Unesco adopts a first text to frame artificial intelligence

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) announced on Thursday 25 November that it had adopted a first global text on the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), a first step to frame these breakthrough technologies, which pose fundamental risks to societies despite the many advances they enable.

“AI technologies can render great services to humanity” and “all countries can benefit from them”, but “they also raise fundamental ethical concerns”, underlines in its preamble the 28-page recommendation, ratified by the 193 Member States of Unesco.

There is "need to ensure the transparency and intelligibility of the operation of the algorithms and the data from which they were trained", because they can influence "human rights and fundamental freedoms, equality of gender, democracy”, still assures this international organization based in Paris.

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Almost absent at the beginning of the millennium, AI has gradually entered our lives: it decides what news we will read on our phone, what films will be offered to us in streaming, what routes the guidance systems will make us follow...

But the algorithms that allow it to work have also been misused in recent years, illustrating its dangers. Facebook has been at the center of several scandals. The British firm Cambridge Analytica has been accused of having misused the American giant's data to politically influence the referendum that led to Brexit in the United Kingdom, and the election of Donald Trump in the United States.

The result of work that started in 2018, the UNESCO recommendation highlights values ​​- "Respect, protection and promotion of human rights", "diversity and inclusion", promotion of "peaceful societies" and the environment – ​​which the Member States undertake to respect.

It also lists actions that the signatories will have to carry out, in particular the establishment of a legislative tool to regulate and monitor AI, “ensure total security for personal and sensitive data” or even educate the masses about them.

"We wanted to have a universal and relatively precise tool, which does not remain at the level of values ​​and generalities", welcomed the director general of Unesco, Audrey Azoulay, welcoming "a victory for multilateralism" during a conference. Press.

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The Council of Europe or the European Union likely to follow this direction

Russia, China and Iran, states regularly accused of obstructing human rights, are signatories to the text which, Unesco recognizes, is an “incentive device” without the possibility of sanctions. Which raises questions about its scope.

“If this text had no power, these countries would not even have come to discuss it,” said Alessandra Sala, director of the artificial intelligence service at content provider Shutterstock, interviewed by AFP.

The United States and Israel, very active in new technologies, are not part of UNESCO. But the administration of President Joe Biden is "working on legislation" on AI, a subject on which "the United States is ahead of Europe", some American states having already greatly complicated the collection of data on their territory, remarks Mrs. Sala.

Another pitfall of this text, it imposes nothing on companies active in artificial intelligence, in particular on the American internet giants, the famous Gafa (acronym designating Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple).

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David Leslie, a researcher at the Alan Turing Institute for Science and AI, nevertheless sees it as "a step in the right direction", which other international institutions, such as the Council of Europe or the European Union will soon follow.

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