Our global agreement on AI could reduce bias and surveillance

Artificial intelligence is more present in our lives than ever: it predicts what we want to say in emails, helps us navigate from A to B and improves our weather reports. The unprecedented speed with which vaccines for covid-19 were developed can also partly be attributed to the use of AI algorithms that rapidly crunched the data from numerous clinical trials, allowing researchers around the world to compare notes in real time. The data sets used to build AI often aren't representative of the diversity of the population, so it can produce discriminatory practices or biases. One example is facial recognition technology. This is used to access our mobile phones, bank accounts and apartment buildings, and is increasingly employed by police forces.