Following several hours of deliberations, representatives from 28 countries and the European Union adopted the ‘New Delhi Declaration’ of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI, pronounced g-pay). India is hosting the summit and will chair the GPAI grouping in 2024. The ministerial declaration affirms the countries’ commitment to “principles for responsible stewardship of trustworthy AI … rooted in democratic values and human rights … and promoting trustworthy, responsible, sustainable and human-centred use of AI.”
GPAI is a grouping of countries in North and South America, Europe, and East Asia, that strives to work towards “trustworthy development, deployment, and use of AI”. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inaugurated the first day of the summit.
The previous summit was held in Japan, which is the outgoing chair of GPAI. “We have also agreed that GPAI, in keeping with values of partner-countries, will be an inclusive movement, including countries in the Global South and make benefits of AI available to all the people of the world,” Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar told reporters as the government announced the declaration’s release.
The previous summit had taken place before the popularity of ChatGPT and the buzz around AI grew exponentially, Mr. Chandrasekhar pointed out. The Delhi declaration commits countries to work on mitigating “concerns around misinformation and disinformation, unemployment, lack of transparency and fairness, protection of intellectual property and personal data, and threats to human rights and democratic values.”
Best possible solutions
“We will discuss how to pool OECD resources to harness the ability to come up with the best possible solutions for the deployment and governance of AI for the good of our people,” Jean-Noël Barrot, France’s Minister for Digital Transition and Telecommunications, told reporters.
“We especially think GPAI should be more inclusive so that we encourage more developing countries to join,” Hiroshi Yoshida, Japan’s Vice-Minister for Policy Coordination (International Affairs) in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, said. “Inclusion of lower and middle income countries is absolutely core to the GPAI mission,” Mr. Chandrasekhar said, adding that Senegal has joined the GPAI steering committee.
A paragraph was dedicated to India’s contribution in making agriculture a part of the AI agenda. “We embrace the use of AI innovation in supporting sustainable agriculture as a new thematic priority for GPAI,” the declaration reads.
