Session
Organizer 1: Nidhi Singh, Centre for Communication Governance
Organizer 2: Aishwarya Giridhar, Centre for Communication Governance, NLU-Delhi
Organizer 3: Joanne D'Cunha, Centre for Communication Governance
Organizer 4: Shashank Mohan, Centre for Communication Governance
Speaker 1: Jhalak Mrignayani Kakkar, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 2: Bhanu Neupane, Intergovernmental Organization, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 3: Prateek Sibal, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Speaker 4: Linda Bonyo, Private Sector, African Group
Shashank Mohan, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Nidhi Singh, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Joanne D'Cunha, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Round Table - Circle - 90 Min
We intend to explore policy questions related to the following themes
-What are the key legal and regulatory AI and data governance processes/frameworks ongoing/being developed in the Global South?
-What are the important issues and innovative governance approaches emerging in these ongoing discussions in the Global South?
-How can we ensure linkages between Global South communities working on these issues to strengthen cooperation, to develop a common agenda and enable their more meaningful participation in the international norms formation processes?
Connection with previous Messages: Our session connects with the following message from IGF 2021 -
“Multiple different actions are needed to fight against illiteracy, in particular in the Global South. There is insufficient common language between stakeholders, inadequate participation and lack of critical assessment of whether engagement is meaningful. There is a need to improve coherent use of terminology which can impact the effectiveness of Internet policy debates. For example, having better translation between languages, but also exchange within and between regions.”
We hope to use our roundtable to foster better engagement between stakeholders on issues relevant to the context of data governance and AI in the Global South region and foster their meaningful inclusion in the norms formation process.
10.6
Targets: The use of artificial intelligence systems and big data analytics has affected all sectors of the economy, and many countries have started adopting laws and regulations to govern the use of such systems. Global South countries play an important, but often overlooked role in this particular ecosystem, by being home to some of the largest developing economies in the world, many of whom are in the process of developing their own norms surrounding the use of AI systems, relevant to their societal contexts. We want to ensure that Global South views are meaningfully represented in the international norms formation process.
We will design the roundtable to enable participant discussion on current and proposed responses/developments to the challenges of AI and data governance and thinking emerging from the Global South that needs to be voiced and integrated into the discussions in global norm building. We aim to consolidate this thinking emerging from the Global South around the governance of AI and Big Data in a policy brief. The learnings from this roundtable can be utilised to ensure that the future governance of AI is informed by diverse perspectives and based on a meaningful dialogue of values, context and experiences.
Description:
Increasing use of AI and Big Data-based systems is challenging data protection and privacy principles worldwide. The conversations around the development of norms for AI and data governance continue to be dominated by a few high-income countries. Beyond disproportionate involvement of high income countries lies the issue of data protection frameworks, which have yet to evolve to adapt to the challenges posed by AI systems. The ensuing situation provides the global community a unique opportunity to bring in the diverse perspectives of the Global South and particularly African countries into the conversation and frame inclusive principles for AI and data governance. Since the impact of AI will likely be disproportionately felt by the marginalised and vulnerable communities of the Global South, leveraging on their previous engagements, UNESCO and CCG will seek to make these conversations universal and informed.
The objective of this roundtable is to build on the ongoing debate and bring forth diverse voices - especially those from the Global South - and perspectives on AI and data governance, and consolidate these learnings to foster a Global South approach for AI and data governance. We will encourage open conversations in a roundtable format to be able to learn about the most pressing issues in AI and data governance.
We hope that diverse stakeholders from the Global South can come together to develop thinking and actionable strategies to enable these communities to meaningfully represent their views at global discussions around AI and data governance. Additionally, we hope that this roundtable will generate necessary ground to create a network of the Global South community that can work towards inclusive AI and data governance.
The goal of the session is to consolidate thinking emerging from the Global South around the governance of AI and Big Data. CCG and UNESCO will design the roundtable to enable us to learn from the participants on what they think are the pressing issues around AI and data governance. During the roundtable, we will enable a discussion to draw out approaches emerging from the Global South on these issues, concerns and ideas that need to be highlighted and integrated into the discussions in global norm building.
The session outcome will be (i) a policy document articulating policy analysis and a research agenda around the emerging practices, models and legal responses to the challenges of privacy online and data protection in the context of AI from the Global South, (ii) building a collaborative community from the Global South that can come together to articulate Global South concerns in the context of AI and Big Data and share these perspectives during global norm development processes.
Hybrid Format: Our session plan is flexible and is designed to allow for robust engagement and participation. To encourage interaction, we plan to allow for significant time for questions and comments from participants once the opening discussants have made their initial points, and will explore specific areas that participants indicate interest in. We will have multiple ways in which participants can provide their comments and questions - speaking online/ in person, typing in questions or comments on the live chat on the Official Online Participation Platform, and on a public Google document we will circulate with prompts for the participants. We will encourage in-person participants to also use these tools so that they are able to engage with those joining online. In previous sessions that we have conducted, we have found Google Docs to be the most bandwidth-friendly, simple, and easy to use tool for participants to flag questions and comments.
Our on-site and online moderators will work with others from the CCG team to keep track of questions and comments from participants and flag them to the speakers and highlight emerging themes. In addition to active and engaged moderators, we plan to use polls as a tool to encourage participation and information sharing.
Usage of IGF Official Tool.