UNESCO completes major progress on establishing foundation of ethics for AI

UNESCOs Member States have announced there has been'major progress' in the development of a global normative instrument for the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI). In November 2019, the United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres congratulated the organisation for taking up this challenge, declaring that AI is a critical frontier issue for the whole UN system and the whole world. In March this year, UNESCO asked 24 experts with multidisciplinary experience in the ethics of artificial intelligence to develop a draft recommendation on the ethics of AI. UNESCO then launched a wide process of consultations to obtain the many points of view of stakeholders. This involved experts from 155 countries, members of the public (through a global online survey), United Nations agencies, major stakeholders from the sector such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft, and the world of academe with the University of Stanford and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.