Global AI fund needed to help developing nations tap tech benefits, UN says

Governments and private companies should contribute to a global artificial intelligence fund that will allow developing nations to benefit from advances in the technology, according to a UN report.

The fund would help provide models, computing power and AI-related training programmes, according to recommendations from the UN secretary general’s high-level AI advisory body.

Dame Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton and a member of the UN’s advisory body on AI, said the western world must not make the same mistakes with the technology that it made with the climate crisis. Referring to developing countries outside the northern hemisphere, Hall said states unable to invest in AI should be given help.

“If we don’t address an issue like a global AI fund now, we risk going down the same route as we did with climate change where developed countries are able to address the problem and race ahead while the global south is left behind and doesn’t have the capacity to address it,” she said.

The report recommends the creation of an accessible store of AI models and datasets (required to build models) that can help achieve the UN’s sustainable development goals, which include eliminating poverty and providing quality education.

The report also recommends the creation of an international scientific panel on AI which would issue an annual report on AI-related “capabilities, opportunities, risks and uncertainties”. It warns that no global framework exists to govern AI and that the technology could be imposed on people without them having any say in the process.

Last year, AI companies and several states committed to a voluntary agreement to test the most powerful AI models, while this month the UK signed an international treaty that aims to prevent misuses of AI.

“To place its governance in the hands of a few developers, or countries that host them, will create a deeply unfair situation,” the report says, adding that the UN can host regular intergovernmental dialogue to foster common ground on managing the technology’s impact.