The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Good afternoon, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, speakers and participants of both on‑site and online. Welcome to workshop number 110, the topic of the workshop is AI Innovation: Responsible Development and Ethic Imperatives. The workshop is co‑organized by CST Council, Committee on Information Technology, and Internet China, IC. David, just call me David, because of pronunciation in Chinese and English. Deputy Secretary of ITC and Deputy Director of IGF. I'm honoured to moderate today's session.
Nowdays, we stand at a very important moment where AI's transformative power must align with ethical imperatives. Therefore, the workshop will explore how to faster innovation while ensuring responsibility, inclusivity and alignment with global digital compact and UNESCO's ethical frameworks.
Let's begin. First I would like to introduce the speakers of today. First Mr. (?) Vice President of Internet Society of China and director of China IGF. Professor, Chair of CCIT. Xiaofeng Tao, Deputy Director of China IGF. And Mr. (?) Director of Digital inclusion of UNESCO and professor from Bejing University. And professor Ricardo Israel Robles Pelayo from Mexico. And Dr. Daisy Selematsela from University from South Africa.
Let's begin. First, I will invite Professor Gong, Chair of CCIT he will deliver our remarks online.
>> KE GONG: Thank you, David. Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, on behalf of one of the organizers of this workshop, CCIT, I welcome you all to join these very important discussion. CCIT stands for Consultive Committee on Information Technology, Under China Association for Science and Technology. CCIT has participated in all 20 editions in the past 20 years of IGF, sharing the perspectives and the practices of China's ICT communities with international partners to promote Internet Governance to be effective, inclusive and serves to the common interest of all people.
Today the theme of our workshop is AI Innovation, Responsible Development and Ethical Imperatives. Artificial intelligence, in short AI, are making breakthroughs in numerous fields at an accelerated pace. Re‑shaping sectors ranging from agricultural, manufacturing, transportation to education, health care, social services and governance. Significantly, artificial intelligence is influencing the development and operation of the Internet and other ICT services. Challenges and risks persist. Lack of explainability and transparency in big AI models. Weak robustness and precision, potential bias and discrimination and the danger of exacerbating existing digital divides both between and within countries.
To maximize AI's potential for achieving sustainable development while minimizing its negative impacts, international collaboration and international consensus is essential. Technical innovation to enhance AI's explainability, transparency, safety and robustness and through proper regulation, based on global consensus on AI principles. Interoperable standards and laws. This workshop will address three core policy dimensions.
First, inclusive development. How can policies safeguard technology excess for developing nations and prevent AI from worsening digital disparities. Second, global governance. How can national frameworks align with the United Nations Global Digital Compact and operationalize UNESCO's recommendation on ethics of artificial intelligence. Third, multiple stakeholder's collaboration. What mechanism, models can force the effective close sector and close border especially in today's geopolitical context.
Dear colleagues, we sincerely invite you to engage in today's dialogue, share your insights on establishing an effective global governance models and lead charge and course for environment that drives sustainable transformation and delivers a responsible digital future for all. Thank you again for joining the workshop.
>> David: Okay, thank you. Thank you, Professor Ke Gong's remark. And next the President of Internet China and
Director of China IGF, Mr. Huang, please.
>> Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good day to you all. It is a great pleasure to be here with you at UNIGF to discuss innovation and development of artificial intelligence.
On behalf of the organizer of this workshop, I would like to extend a warm welcome to all the participants.
In recent years the rapid development of AI technology has profoundly impacted human production and the lifestyle. However, it has also brought about many challenges, such as algorithic bias bridges, disinformation, deep fakes and information (?).
>> How to ensure the innovation of AI develops in the direction has become a crucial issue that needs to be addressed urgently. This issue involves not only technological and ‑‑ (audio issues)
>> David: Okay, excuse me. The mic is ‑‑ doesn't work. Okay, can you help us to resolve the problem?
>> You hear me, okay. This issue involves not only technological and the legal aspects but also ethical and the moral considerations.
Therefore clarifying path to ethical AI and great considerations is necessary for safe and ethical development of global AI industry.
At present the innovation and development of AI is a global affair that requires participation and cooperation of the international communities. Countries should participate in global governance of AI with sense of responsibility.
The ultimate goal of AI technology should be to promote human well‑being and the overall happiness and quality of the lives of the people.
Increasing number of international organisations, governments and Civil Society have introduced ethical principles and government's policies for AI.
In November 2021 at 44th session of the UNESCO General Conference, 193 member states unanimously adopted accommodation or ethics of artificial intelligence, which proposed to provide new opportunities to encourage ethical research and the innovation and to ground AI technology on horizon and ethical considerations.
To ground AI technology in human rights and fundamental freedoms, values and ethical considerations.
In October 2023, China Released the Global AI Governance Initiative, emphasizing people and entities and intelligence for good and provided a Chinese solution for global AI governance based on the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind. At same time we must recognise promoting AI in accordance with ethical concept of technology for good requires not only the guidance of governments but also extensive participation of all sector of the society.
As a Civil Society in China, Internet Society of China has always been committed to promote self‑discipline and construction of social responsibility in China's Internet industry.
And has released a number of initiative documents and industry conventions.
Based on the valuable platform of the Internet Governance Form, I also say undertakes work of the China secretary actively participating in global Internet governance and sharing China's beneficial practice in data security and algorithm governance.
Contributing to the global governance of Internet frontier technologies, as presented by AI technology.
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that the core goal of promoting the responsible development of AI is to ensure that AI technology benefits humanity, with respect for mental rights, promotes fairness and justice and prevents potential risks.
I hope that through this workshop we can bring together consensus of all parties, exchanges and cooperations and work together to contribute to the innovation and development of AI.
I wish the workshop accomplished success, and you all.
>> DAVID: Thank you, Mr. Huang, for opening perspective. And now the first presentation, the speaker (?) Director for Digital Inclusion at UNESCO. His topic is shaping humanistic and inclusive AI innovation. Mr. (?) you have the floor.
>> Thank you very much. Thank you for the invitation to be here. And the previous two speakers already did part of my job because they explained better than I could to what are the key characteristics of the UNESCO recommendations on ethics and AI, so probably saved me a few seconds on this conversation.
So the first important thing here, if you need to take just one element of my five minutes is this one: We shouldn't put innovation, protection and promotion of human rights as contradictory goals in this conversation about AI. It's possible to innovate and at the same time protect and promote for the mental freedoms and human rights and be ethical. This should be actually our aim. We shouldn't negotiate that. Actually, good innovation is very much related to the fact that we are not leaving anyone behind. Otherwise, is an innovation that benefits just a specific group in our society.
So that said, the spoiler made, this is my conclusion. Let me just go into some specifics. UNESCO is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year, right. We were created together with the UN system in 1945. If you look into the very first paragraph of the UNESCO Constitution, you will see there that UNESCO is an organisation that should promote the free‑flow of information and ideas.
So from the very start of UNESCO, every technological revolution were brought to UNESCO to discuss, well, how we support this technological revolution and same time we keep this mandate of protecting the free flow of information and ideas, which is broadly connected with the overall protection and promotion of the international human rights law system and international standards that all UNESCO's 194 Member States have agreed in the first place.
So, as you can imagine, it is easy to say but it is not that easy to do. And if we want to summarize in a nutshell is what the previous two speakers already said. At the end of the day, when we are looking to assessing these technological changes, in this case AI but a few years ago was another thing, tomorrow will be quantum or whatever, we are looking to three big things. We need to find ways to foster the huge opportunities we have with these technological revolutions and fostering these opportunities to everyone. We need to mitigate the risks. And eventually, we need to prosecute the harms.
And is not one thing or the other; is one thing and the other. That is the basic of the governance system. How we do this. How we enhance the opportunities, mitigate the risks and eventually prosecute the harms. In the you of the UNESCO and United Nations system, we do that implementing the international agreements, international standards we have agreed on the first place. In our case the declaration of human rights.
So the UNESCO recommendation on ethics and AI actually is a translation to the AI sphere of these 80 years of history in dealing with the different technological changes that had and assess those changes keeping in mind regional commitments and principles of our societies. Again, in our case the human rights system and Human Rights Declaration.
So to conclude, practically speaking, what we are doing now is guaranteeing that our Member States are capable of using the recommendation on ethics and AI and assess themselves to understand how ready they are to move to the next step. So more than 7 UNESCO Member States have implemented the readiness assessment methodology, a good self‑assessment of what is needed to make the jump. And the second big pillar of this conversation for UNESCO, Member States, is capacity‑building. Is the first demand we have from our Member States is increase capacity‑building on different areas.
So very recently we launched in beginning of June in Paris a global Alliance of National Schools of Governments in published administration to create processes and service training of civil servants in the public sector about these issues.
Then finally to conclusion I'm secretary of an important intergovernmental programme in UNESCO, which China is a very active member. In that programme we are always emphasizing if what we are doing here is not for everyone, for all, then we are missing something. Therefore, we need to look into specific issues such as multi‑lingualism, people with disabilities, gender gaps, so on and so forth.
So thank you, pleasure to participate in this conversation.
>> DAVID: Thank you, Mr.(?) Next, Professor (?) From (?) University, Risk and Responsible Use of AI in Higher Education. Professor Chan, please.
>> CHAN CHIN: Thank you for giving opportunity to address issue. Ethics in education and as we know the AI actually pose some unique ‑‑ you need ethical and risk to society. For example, like a fairness transparency privacy issues, especially for education sector. Therefore, in my presentation, following presentation I look at, you know, the risk ‑‑ AI risk and education of generative AI in higher education.
First of all, what kind of education we use at the moment in higher education. For example, we use generative AI for technical writing, learning support, personalize, adaptive learning, pedagogical and creative support and so on.
So that is opportunity bought by the generative AI such as we can have more convenience at student centre opportunity and institutional opportunity and education innovation (?) Of course for education sector and teacher's time allow them to focus on more excellent teaching or innovative teachings.
At same time we also notice much many more research has been going on. Looking at risk in AI in educational sector. There are several salient risks. The first is acceleration of digital poverty, which means data reached poor country could be excluded from development of the (?) Or algorithm. Second reason, lack of national supervision of recommendation, which means technology is too fast. And most of time is big company, you know, who control the technology, who know how to use it, implement it. Well, actually the regulator lack behind to regulate, so there is some kind of the gaps between technological development and recommendation. The second one is authorize use of accounting, we know that. So many legal case going on in moment, Intellectual Property right issues. The first one is disparity of generative moral because of black box nature is difficult reason to generate specific content and the fifth is continuing of general content.
There is report people publish which talk about how the ChatGPT (?) Trend by content, the GPT. That is the curve trending, so reliable, the outcome is reliable. Again, serious problem with ability of knowledge in long‑term. Then lack of real‑world understanding. As we know that (?) Doesn't mean understand the text, the output that gave to you. We know the mechanism how generative AI work. That is other two risk which is significant. Why when we look at education, we look at natural language model without risk, there is reduce, diversity of opinions and marginalize or manner of words. Because opinions dominate, the general ‑‑ some opinion, which is most common dominant positions and deep fake issue as well.
So there is some policy recommendations abused on UNESCO's report. Of course other country, they keep some recommendation but I use the recommendation from the UNESCO. So, for example, the first four, for example, we need to educate the school and the institution. Educate institution to improve understanding of potential benefit of risk of artificial intelligence. So they need to understand what is potential benefit but at same times the risks in the educational institutions. The second attribute, we need to reflect on long‑term impact of generative AI on education of research.
So this is ‑‑ because as we notice that is still most of country are still in very early stage of adopting generative AI in education. We are some of (?) Country China, America and you and other country still in early stage to adopt AI so urgent need for public debate and (?) Long‑term impact of AI on education. This kind of debate has to be multistakeholder inclusive. Otherwise designation ‑‑ incantation of age and (?) Of generative AI, what is age imitation for use to use AI. Most of the model is designed without, 18 or at least 30 years old. So allowing primary or middle school student and same 13 to use ChatGPT, so that is a risk as well. So we need to discuss this. Then the next is data online deeps so huge conversation about structure of data. What kind of, if you will, amount use generated of commercial data to be only owned by large company, which will kind of monopolize the data. So we have a huge debate how to use those data. So actually we use a case study from China and U.K., because I do not have many time too left. You are welcome to do some research and these two country. I think very interesting case study. China just allows the two guidance. The first guidance is guidance for general education intelligence and primary in school and use of artificial intelligence this year, so give very detailed plan, you know, how to use AI in their primary and secondary education. Of course there are some, for example, they have particular approach. For example, the (?) to creation so pedagogical design and promote international standard and collaboration, whether the approach is slightly different. You could also publish recent this year and last year, publish whether company has guidance in using AI in education context, for example safe and effective use of AI, so more look at safety issue. The safety issue is top priority when deciding whether to use AI in educational sector. These two is choosing for us to explore further and we need urgent debate, especially on countries who hasn't applied AI in education, so thank you very much.
>> DAVID: Thank you, Professor Chin. Now I will invite our third speaker, Professor Ricardo Israel Robles Pelayo from Mexico. He will share innovation with responsibility, legal and ethical perspective. Okay, Professor, please.
>> RICARDO ISRAEL ROBLES PELAYO: Thank you, everyone. It is an honour to be here and share a reflection and topic that is crucial to our person and, above all, our future. Artificial intelligence is both as driver and is ethical and legal challenge. AI is forming aspect of life. From daily activity to critical sectors such as health care, education, justice and security. While AI offers great innovation potential, it is also presents ethical and legal challenges and demands responsibility. Therefore it is essential to establish guiding principles, values, regulations and public policies to ensure the responsible and sustainable use of this resource. Based on my professional experience in Mexico and North America, education and justice system are two key areas that can significantly shape how society respond to the impact of the AI.
Thinking about ‑‑ talking about the AI source of stress of the students. As I mentioned in IGF in Berlin, it is urgent to apply in design of educational policies. However, it is important not to lose sight of student experience in daily lives. Connectivity and constant use of AI tools can provoke insanity, destruction and technological dependence among young people. The pressure to stay updated the overflow and items that filter and shape what we consume directly affect their emotional well‑being and ability to develop critical thinking. Despite this, we are seeing how many educational institutions, even the national education system, are hastily incorporating AI without taking the time to analyse the implications. It seems the urgency to innovate has overtaken reflection on the human consequence this entails.
What about the artificial intelligence in the justice system? AI is already being used in areas such as crime prediction, evidence analysis and sentencing recommendation. However, in country like Mexico, where the justice system faces deeper challenges, we must ask is it legitimate to trust an algorithm trained with biassed data. Can a judge delegate their human judgement to a machine.
Recently Mexico established a system for selecting judges that prioritises popular election over academic training and technical experience, undermining impartiality and legal quality. This reality, combined with work overload, lack of specialized training and political electoral pressures may lead to a dangerous trend. Using AI as a short‑cut to issue rulings, this regarding the ethical principles and critical analysis justice requires.
What about the AI versus ethics morality and critical thinking? Artificial intelligence makes decisions based on data, but lacks autonomy and ethical judgement, which can lead to bias. Ethics enables deliberation on what is right through philosophical principles. It can become unjust when imposed alternatively. In social norms may exclude if not in this context, critical is essential for questioning (?) Identifying risks it serve as key mediator to ensure fair and contextualized decisions. No system is infallible on its own. Critical thinking as essential mediator for fair and contextualized decisions. In conclusion, artificial intelligence is already ‑‑ sorry, reshaping how we learn, judge and protect ourselves. However, without ethical guidance, it can threaten human dignity. Its misuse in education justice and cyber security highlights the need for strong regulations, inclusive policies and critical engaged society. Building a fair and sustainable digital world requires not just innovation but shared responsibility and focus on humanity.
Innovation must not be an end of itself. Should be guided by law, ethics and critical reflection. Mexico has the opportunity to build an inclusive regulated and people‑centred artificial intelligence models. That will be true, responsible innovation.
So thank you again for allowing me to share these ideas with you. And look forward to continuing to collaborate in these important forums.
>> DAVID: Thank you, Professor Pelayo. Now Professor Daisy Selematsela from Witwatersrand University in South Africa, discussing how institutions leverage laboratories to navigate AI challenges and opportunities. Dr. Daisy Selematsela, please.
>> DAISY SELEMATSELA: I want to highlight issues faced by academic libraries when we look at the integration of AI in the work that we do. As you have heard from the other panelists here, issues around data impacting on higher education, especially the pedagogy side. But coming from the library, we deal with collections from academic libraries and how do we see the interface between collections that we have. So I just want to touch base on ethical concerns that we have. You have heard a lot. You heard from the previous speakers. That from ethical concerns from us from the library side we handle vast data. It is quite crucial to navigate these ethical dilemmas responsibly from the library side.
When we look at technical challenge, we also are looking at issues such as interoperability of our systems, because we then also align ourselves with international databases and e‑resources and also a lack of technical expertise also hinder our seamless adoption.
The other part I want to touch base on is issues around financial constraints. And here, as you know, when budgets are cut in university, libraries are the first ones to be affected by the budget cuts. And this makes it difficult in investing in advanced AI solutions.
The other aspect that's a challenge is the job displacement fears, concerns exist among staff about the potential use of AI replacing human jobs and especially where we have tools we use as librarians for the services that we provide.
The other challenge that I want to highlights, issues around content digitalisation. In this age we want to ensure our collections are digitized and part of the effectiveness of AI, we need to ensure high‑quality digital content is essential for optimal functionality.
The other aspect is users. Our library users, students, academics and researchers at‑large, user is quite key and education literacy and you have heard the pedagogies, but it is quite key when we look at the adoption of technologies, especially AI. The other aspect we pick up as challenge is interference with traditional teaching and learning. And you have heard a little about the pedagogical aspect, it is quite important. The other aspect is data at‑risk or fragility of access. At libraries, implementing robust such as encryption, access and control measures, because that is key for the work we do. The other aspect is constant entity we pick up when we are looking at integration of AI in academic libraries. Here are key aspects I want to highlight. Data quality and reliability. We are looking at inconsistent or biassed data that can lead to unreliable outcomes, making it challenging to maintain access and accessibility in library. The other is key dependence, issues around several text that actually compromise library resources and services. As you know with libraries we deal mostly with international platforms and tools.
The other aspect is evolving technologies that for libraries globally we tend to subscribe to similar tools and databases. This require resource‑intensive ‑‑ which are quite resource‑intense and also impacts on the longevity and stability of current system and need to keep abreast of technologies. The other is ethical and privacy concerns. When we use AI in libraries, we need to ensure the AI systems we have are transparent and fair as an ongoing challenge.
The other aspect is user adaptation. We can't overemphasize the involvement of users of the tools, the databases we have in libraries to ensure in quality and access it is across‑the‑board, as we have heard from a colleague from UNESCO.
Educating users in content is the daily bread in libraries and is difficult. The other aspect around regulators and policy changes. Libraries must stay informed and compliant with changes which can add to the issues we face. The other aspect is the benefits that we look into. And the benefits of academic library s is personized learning. We need to ensure that AI as a tool can us in recommending books, articles and other materials to ensure for the user. This tailored approach would enhance linear experience of students and researchers.
The other is automation of repetitive tasks. We do routine things, indexing and inventory management and see the use of AI allowing librarians to focus more on complex tasks and activities. That is how we see the movement with AI tools. Improved data management and analysis. Also we see AI tools that can happen, manage, live datasets, making it easier to divide meaningful insight and support on research activities.
The other aspect, no library can work or be effective without access to E3 resources 237, irrespective where you are. We are saying AI‑powered chatbots and virtual assistants can provide around‑the‑clock support to users and queries in library services at any given time. The other aspect AI offers that we ‑‑ as offer as benefits to human academic libraries is enhanced set and discoverability. We can't operate without AI‑driven algorithms that can analyse vast data sets quickly, improving accuracy of search results. This helps researchers and students to find relevant information.
Access accessibility is about the speech‑to‑text, text‑to‑speech and other assistive technologies for disabled users in software. When we come to resource planning and collection development we see predictive analytics that can help librarians plan resources and develop collections that can better meet needs of their users. This benefits actually highlight the transformative potential of AI in academic libraries, making them much more efficient, capable and supporting advanced research.
The other part is libraries’ issues around repositories. Our repositories, whether on data repositories or repositories about our collections, also we see the benefits where AI can serve as agents that can also enhance the functionalities of our repositories. How so here, we are looking at content generation, where this includes generating summaries, translations and even new research article business analyzing and synthesizing information from the repository. The other aspect would be enhanced search and discoverability. Here we are looking at AI agents that can improve the certain discovery process by understanding user queries better and providing more relevant results. And they can also suggest related material that users might find useful. That is how we see the growth in how AI can be used in our repositories. Other aspect relate to automated meta data to reduce effort required in cataloguing in the library. Other aspect is personized recommendations. Here AI agents can offer personized accommodations for books to a particular user, articles and other resources, enhancing the user's experience. The other ‑‑
>> DAVID: Sorry, Professor Selematsela, speech is up. Only have five minutes, sorry. Thank you, Dr. ‑‑ Madame Daisy Selematsela. I will invite(?) Director of IGF in (?).
>> I'm glad to be involved in this interesting discussion. I share distinguished speakers. The first is why we are still talking about innovation and governance. As I heard, professional industry that governance cannot be too early. It is an AI young baby at this moment. We know you cannot go to a job without brake with your car. So actually I think from China's philosophy that that is the beauty, the unity of optics.
So from the innovation and governance, ethics, they are not optics. We have to align with each other in nature, in our philosophy, with governance we can't go further. So my second point is that what we can learn from Internet Governance, because we are here at Internet Governance Forum and of course it has the beauty of the stakeholder approach. What is difference from AI and Internet. As we know the Internet has connected all of us horizontally. But AI has changed its view vertically, so more context especially in ethics and simple issues.
What we can learn from the governance stakeholder but go further, there be more context. The question is what we can do in future. Definitely I think for AI governance, people. We should find something that is important beautiful, human people but still further. We need find something in common at one thing I think particularly for added value that should be in my mind there should be set of frameworks down by UNESCO but essentially we all recognise (?) Because I think AI is more empowering and should be more inform people, more enabling than just prevent the control the machine that. Is a human behind the machine. I think human‑central, that means we should raise awareness of each people ‑‑ of each person, awareness that something good happen.
It has become too complex and hard find something common. Still find something common, I think there is awareness, human‑centric, capacity‑building and we are all doing like student‑centric, capacity‑building and I think we should have shared vocabulary, including framework of ethics and also interoperable standards. So like find something common and still allows beauty of multistakeholder approach is considering different culture and backgrounds. So actually, I think very important, we can learn something from Internet governance, the multistakeholder approach and be more enabling and responsible for AI because it has been more complex and also have has ethics insights. My initial comments, thank you.
>> DAVID: Thank you Ms. Jong. We have six minutes. My schedule we have free discussion, but time is up. Okay. I will make conclusion. We have three critical takeaways emerge. First, inclusion is foundation. AI must bridge not deepen global divides, especially in Global South. Second, governance requires unity and frameworks must harmonize with international norms like UNESCO's ethic recommendation. And the third innovation drives with guardrails, ethical by design. AI serves humanity, not vice versa.
So if you have some questions or we can make a discussion and maybe have more discussion and dialogues after the workshop. So we believe that is through our shared efforts, AI can become a force for good, advancing economic and social (?) And creating a better future for all.
So do you have questions? You can ask, and our speakers maybe will answer you. Still have four minutes. Okay. If you have question, you can raise your arm. So very glad to meet you in this workshop. On behalf of office of ICT and China IGF, I thank our operating speakers, engaged participants and IGF secretary, especially IGF Secretary. So thank you, IGF, for giving us important and equal platform to share our experiences and discuss the problems and share the opinions. So we hope that IGF will hold continuously. Maybe is our ‑‑ the same hope.
Okay. The time is up. If you want to make more collaboration, we can discuss and work that out after this workshop. Okay, thank you, thank you.
(Applause)
