India has a unique vantage position on how AI could play out in the Global South: UN Tech Envoy

New York: India's successful experience of building digital public infrastructure at scale has a unique vantage position on how Artificial Intelligence could play out in the Global South, UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology Amandeep Singh Gill has said.

India's experience in tackling the potential risks and challenges would also be of global interest, and would be watched carefully, Gill told PTI in an interview here.

“As a large developing country, with a successful experience of building digital public infrastructure at scale, by laying out a foundation of digital identity, digital payment mechanisms and then starting to build data flow, data management platforms on top of that -- India has a unique vantage position on how AI could play out in the Global South,” he said.

Gill said India can take the “leadership” in championing responsible applications of AI for development, for leap-frogging many of the challenges that developing countries face, including financial inclusion, last-mile access to health and education programmes, building a digital economy with well-paying jobs for the growing population of youth.

He further underscored that the position that India takes, along with its peers in the Global South such as Indonesia, Brazil, Kenya, South Africa, and other countries which do not have the continental scale about data or the economic leverage of countries like China and the US, will be “important".

Gill, who was India’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva from 2016-2018, was last year appointed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as his Envoy on Technology.

Before being appointed to this role, he served as the Chief Executive Officer of the International Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence Research Collaborative (I-DAIR) project, based at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.

In October this year, Gill was named a member of the ‘High-Level Multistakeholder Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence’ launched by Guterres, who underscored that AI could power "extraordinary progress” for humanity.

Gill, as well as several members of the Advisory Body, will be participating in the 2023 Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) Summit, which was inaugurated on Tuesday by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi.

Terming the Delhi summit as an “important opportunity”, Gill said it comes at a crucial juncture, from technology as well as political and policy points of view.

While the Global Partnership on AI came out of the G7 through an initiative of France and Canada, Gill noted that since its launch in 2020, it has grown to embrace more countries.

From the UN's perspective, the participation of the Global South in the initiative is a “very welcome” development, he said.

“The lacuna in many of the AI-related initiatives today is that they are coming from a small group of countries and largely from the Global North and it's important to enlarge the scope of participation to be more inclusive.”

He said that if AI matters for humanity, whether for good in terms of its tremendous opportunities or for the risks and challenges it poses, “then all of humanity should be involved in its governance”.

Gill further noted that as a country with a diverse society, rich cultural heritage of languages, ethnicities, and traditional sources of knowledge, India can also be a "thought leader” in how to ensure that AI does not lead to “uniformity" in terms of datasets, cultures, and languages and that “we preserve” the rich diversity of the world's cultures, traditions of thought and knowledge of different communities.

"There is an angle of rule of law, democracy, and human rights. When you build such powerful technologies, the values on which you construct them, on which you base them are very important,” he said, adding that the international community has to ensure that these technologies are not misused for mass surveillance, violation of human rights, exclusion of certain communities.

“Therefore, India's experience in tackling those potential risks and challenges would also be of global interest, and would be watched carefully.” Gill highlighted the short-term as well as long-term risks and challenges emerging from AI, including misuse by non-state actors, potential changes in the labour market, deepfakes, misinformation, and disinformation.

“A majority of the world's population goes to elections next year, including in India, and citizens must get to hear all kinds of views without distortion of facts, without misrepresentation of what political personalities and other opinion shapers are doing or saying,” he said.

He added that a comprehensive view and assessment of these risks and challenges based on science, evidence and with sufficient safeguards will be crucial.

“It's important that a neutral entity such as the UN" which can bring together global and scientific expertise “is engaged on these risk assessments”, Gill said.

Gill underlined that AI and digital technologies provide wiring for different sets of technologies to come together. “That's creating a multitude of possibilities in any field.”