We are proud to announce that the global Policy Kitchen challenge "Towards an Inclusive Future in AI" has been successfully completed! The results are published in a recent paper.
In response to the accelerating potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to transform our lives, various governments, multilateral bodies, and other organizations have produced high level principles and guidelines for the ethical use of AI in recent years. Despite the staggering number of such documents (over 90 by October 2019), there appears to be a relatively high degree of convergence on the level of principles. «Inclusiveness» is one of just a handful of principles that most actors seem to agree upon. However, a closer look reveals that the principle is interpreted very differently in terms of the domain, scope and actors it pertains to. As the global community now works on transitioning from principle to practice, there is a clear need to specify what the principles mean in context and how they can be operationalized and evaluated.
To respond to this gap, the swissnex Network, foraus, and AI Commons launched the global campaign «Towards an Inclusive Future in AI» with foraus’ new Policy Kitchen methodology. This joint experiment resulted in 11 workshops in 8 countries, involving 10 partner organizations (see below) and about 120 participants from a wide range of perspectives (impressions can be found here). They collaboratively generated 43 ideas for an inclusive future in AI. The preliminary output was presented at the AI for Good Global Summit 2019.
The paper presents an in-depth exploration of ideas and proposals collected during the participatory process. It was presented on 24. October 2019 - together with second paper resulting from the Policy Kitchen challenge "Towards a Swiss AI strategy" - at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, to 110 represenatives of international organizations, the Swiss government, academia, civil society organizations and the wider public. Guest speakers included Amandeep Gill (Former Executive Director, UNSG High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation; Project lead I-DAIR & Policy Fellow, The Graduate Institute) and Sacha Alanoca (AI Policy Researcher, The Future Society).
We would like to thank all participants in the challenge, as well as our partners at Agora, AI for Good Global Summit, Argo, Berkman Klein Center For Internet and Society at Harvard University, Lift:Lab, Polis180, Ponto, Swiss Embassy in Austria, the swissnex hubs / science and technology offices in Bengaluru, Boston, San Francisco, São Paulo and Seoul, Wadhwani AI, WEF Global Shapers Jaipur, and the World Summit on the Information Society.
We are also very grateful for the support by our outstanding advisory board: Jonathan Andrew (Geneva Academy), Amir Banifatemi (XPRIZE, AI Commons), Jan Gerlach (Wikimedia), Jessica Cussins Newman (Center for Long Term Cybersecurity), Brandie Nonnecke (CITRIS Policy Lab UC Berkeley) and Malavika Jayaram (Digital Asia Hub, Berkman Klein Center).
Also, check out ITU's video from the AI For Good Global Summit on "Towards an Inclusive Future in AI"! With this, the publication with its valuable inputs from Policy Kitchen participants and experts reaches more people and therefore further increases its impact!
Finally, we'd like to thank Engagement Migros for supporting Policy Kitchen.