The speakers of the discussion were Evgeny Tonkikh, Deputy Head of Department of FSBI NIIR, Alexandra Komleva, Project Manager of the Russian Foundation for Development of Information Technologies, Alex Ferseev, Lecturer of SUSS Business School and CEO of Somin.ai (Singapore), Vitaly Nechaev, CEO of VOSTOK VR, Vitaly Nechaev, Associate Professor of the American Studies Department of St. Petersburg State University, Candidate of pedagogic sciences Anna Sytnik, Maria Bazlutskaya, Ph.D. candidate at the Department of World Political Processes at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Rustam Vakhitov, co-founder of the BEPS Academy, and Roman Shamraev, expert analyst at the Center for Global IT Cooperation. The discussion was moderated by Vasily Zudin, Deputy Director of the Center.
In February 2024, major international IT companies signed a global agreement to comply with UNESCO recommendations on the ethics of artificial intelligence in the development and implementation of these systems, recalled Evgeny Tonkikh. "Sadly, though, ethics alone is not the way to go at this point. Different trends in different states create some fragmentation. And that creates some difficulties, both in terms of technological cooperation and regulatory cooperation, because almost all applications are cross-border, and something has to be done about that," he said. Therefore, when it became clear that the issue could no longer be put off, the UN High-Level Advisory Panel on Artificial Intelligence was established.
Alexandra Komleva was of the opinion that the legalization (mainly soft law norms) is fragmentary at the moment, but we have to start somewhere. Ethics is the first step in developing general rules for any field. This has been the case in genetics, for example. Scientists first established ethical standards, from which other industry rules have evolved. Another important step in the development of international regulation, in their view, is the standardization process.
The concepts of what constitutes an actual legal violation and what constitutes an ethical violation in the field of AI need to be distinguished, argues Alex Ferseev. "I don't think there are a lot of gaps where AI activities are not covered or regulated at all in terms of specific laws of specific countries. Regarding the ethical aspects, serious work is being done, including tracking large linguistic models. But most importantly, we need to increase the digital literacy of the population so that people understand what they are doing and what data they are sharing when they use Internet services," he added.
It's important to realize, however, that data is the new oil in international relations. And it depends on who will be more successful in licensing data and more quickly build a competent policy in the field of data exchange between different countries, who will win the race of large linguistic models, said Anna Sytnik. She added that there is now such a term as "digital power" - a country that has digital power is able to influence world politics, meaning that technology is becoming an integral part of the geopolitical struggle.
Roman Shamraev also touched on the issue of the geopolitical struggle of the digital powers - the trade and economic war between the USA and China, which is strongly affecting the global high-tech market. In his opinion, the Rubicon has already been crossed and mutual restrictions have reached such a level that countries that are not directly involved in this confrontation, but whose companies are directly affected by it (for example, the Netherlands), are asking to try to preserve the principles of open economy for the sake of the technological development of the world.
Summing up the results of the roundtable, Vasily Zudin reminded that technology is constantly developing, and soon mankind will be able to implant a chip in the brain that will replace the usual way of communication, which means that finding ways to implement the rules of using new technologies is one of the main tasks for the future.
