At last week’s AI Action Summit in Paris, most of the world’s attention was focused on the growing divide between the US and Europe on AI innovation versus regulation.
However, the actions of various Asian countries show how the region takes a practical path to optimize the economic opportunities presented by AI while dealing with its problems.
Asia’s largest countries and those most invested in the AI industry, such as Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea, joined over 100 other countries in the Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable AI for People & the Planet.
This agreement supports efforts to use AI to reduce the digital divide, ensure openness and safety, positively shape the future of work, and promote environmentally sustainable AI.
Cautious approach to hypothetical harms
However, another agreement that saw less participation from Asia was the Paris Charter on AI in the Public Interest, with only co-chair India joining 10 other signatories. The Charter focuses on market concentration in the AI industry, noting the importance of getting access to high-quality data and that “…openness in AI is largely driven by a few actors’ decision to partly open their foundation models.”
It placed a strong emphasis on accountability and enforcement of rules to protect the public interest.
On a similar note regarding rights protections, Japan was the first country in Asia to join 39 other signatories to the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law on the sidelines of the Paris AI Action Summit. The Framework obligates members to ensure measures are in place to prevent AI systems from undermining human rights and to remedy any violations.
No signatories from Asia joined the Paris Declaration on Maintaining Human Control in AI enabled Weapon Systems. This Declaration is meant to build guardrails on AI-enabled weapons, for example by ensuring that life and death decisions not be delegated to AI systems without human oversight and control.
Most Asian country activity at the Summit came at various side events. Privacy regulators from Asia, including Australia and South Korea, joined those from UK, Ireland and France to agree to a joint statement on building trustworthy data governance frameworks, build regulatory sandboxes for companies to experiment with AI technology, and further cooperate with other regulators in the competition, intellectual property, and consumer protection spheres, recognizing that privacy regulators alone cannot address all AI harms.
Singapore unveiled a number of projects at the Summit including a Global AI Assurance Pilot for best practices around technical testing of GenAI applications, a joint report with Japan on multilingual AI safety testing, and a AI red-teaming evaluation report.
This reflects Singapore’s continuing efforts to build practical AI governance tools and cooperate internationally on these efforts.
Threading the needle on innovation and regulation
Overall, Asian countries did not fall on one side or the other of the AI innovation versus regulation debate. Rather countries such as South Korea and Singapore addressed practical problems in current AI use cases in privacy and testing.
Although Japan and India engaged in some higher-level human rights and public interest matters, hypothetical and higher-level concerns in human rights or military AI were relegated to more cautious and strategic corners.
These approaches show that Asian countries want to support AI innovation and avoid over-regulation, while at the same time fixing problematic AI with practical solutions.
As the AI industry develops in Asia, countries will want to see the overall positive economic and social value of AI on balance with any negative outcomes, otherwise tightening of the industry may come in the form of greater regulation in the years to come.
Seth Hays is an attorney and managing director of APAC GATES, a Taipei-based rights consultancy. He also leads the Digital Governance Asia – a non-profit organization dedicated to sharing policy best practices across Asia.
