U.S. joins G7 artificial intelligence group to counter China

U.S. has joined an international panel for setting ethical guidelines for use of artificial intelligence. Trump ministration h earlier dismissed idea.

White House's chief techlogy officer, Michael Kratsios, told Associated Press on Thursday it is important to establish shared democratic principles as a counter to China's record of “twisting techlogy” in ways that threaten civil liberties.

“Chinese techlogy companies are attempting to shape international standards on facial recognition and surveillance at United Nations," he said.

Trump ministration h been lone holdout among leers of Group of Seven — world's wealthiest democracies — in setting up Global Partnership on AI.

partnership launched Thursday after a virtual meeting between national techlogy ministers. It was nearly two years after leers of Cana and France anunced y were forming a group to guide responsible option of AI based on shared principles of "human rights, inclusion, diversity, invation and ecomic growth.”

Trump ministration objected to that approach, arguing that too much focus on regulation would hamper U.S. invation. But negotiations over past year and changes to group's scope led U.S. to join, Kratsios said.

“We worked very hard to make it clear that it would t be a standard-setting or policy-making body,” he said.

U.S. involvement is important because of large role that American tech firms play globally and its historic vocacy for human rights, said Kay Mathiesen, an associate professor focused on computer ethics at rastern University in Boston.

“U.S. tech companies such as Microsoft, Google and Apple are all concerned about what guidelines y should be following to use AI responsibly,” she said. “Given ir global presence, fact that U.S. wasn’t involved does t mean that y would t end up having to follow any regulations developed by rest of G7.”

(Representative Im)(Im Credit Pixabay)