The rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies is taking place in a highly-connected global context, in which funding, data, talent, and computing resources flow across borders to create globally-sourced products with global audiences.
Building a safe, secure, trustworthy global AI ecosystem will require robust international collaboration and thorough understanding of the global impacts of AI technologies across a range of geographic and cultural contexts. This requires the expertise of local communities, the private sector, civil society, governments, and other stakeholders.
Global AI Research Agenda
The Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence promotes safe, responsible, and rights-affirming development and deployment of AI abroad. It directs the US State Department and USAID to develop a Global AI Research Agenda to guide the objectives and implementation of AI-related research in contexts beyond United States borders.
The Global AI Research Agenda shall:
- Include principles, guidelines, priorities, and best practices aimed at ensuring the safe, responsible, beneficial, and sustainable global development and adoption of AI; and
- Address AI’s labor-market implications across international contexts, including by recommending risk mitigations.”
USAID and the State Department are seeking information from you through this Federal Register notice to assist them in:
- Leveraging robust research collaborations to promote the safe, responsible, beneficial, and sustainable development of AI technologies around the world.
- Outlining important areas of inquiry for the study of AI’s human impacts in a global context.
- Addressing the global labor market implications of AI.
Please Give Your Feedback Now
Please answer any or all of these six questions based on your experience, the positions of your organization, or research you have encountered or conducted. Where possible, please cite the source of your information or note when personal views are expressed.
- Research best practices: What sorts of guidelines, practices, or institutional arrangements can help various research stakeholders (universities, corporate R&D centers, conferences, journals, etc.) ensure that AI research is safe, ethical, and sensitive to global contexts? In particular, what criteria and frameworks are currently being used by AI conferences, publications, and funders?
- International engagement: What types of international research partnerships have been most effective in ensuring alignment on safe, secure, and trustworthy AI? What types have been challenging?
- Foundation models: How might research and engagement best practices differ between the developers of foundation models and “downstream” users of these models? What do users want and need from foundation model developers?
- Human impacts: What considerations are most important for safe and ethical research into the human impacts of AI systems (e.g., mental health, labor displacement, bias and discrimination)? How do these considerations vary in different global contexts?
- Enabling infrastructure: What are the best strategies to ensure access to computing resources, data, and other prerequisites for AI research?
- Global equity considerations: How might these best practices or strategies look different for partnerships in developed economies and those involving emerging economies? How might best practices differ for different types of partnerships (academic, private sector, government, public-private etc.)?
Response to this Request for Information is voluntary. Submissions must not exceed 10 pages (when printed) in 12-point or larger font, with a page number provided on each page.
Please include your name, organization’s name (if any), and cite “Global AI Research Agenda” in all correspondence. Comments may be submitted by email to [email protected] as an attachment in any of the following unlocked formats: HTML; ASCII; Word; RTF; Unicode, or .pdf.
Written comments may be submitted by mail to: USAID, IPI/ITR/T, Rm. 2.12–213, RRB, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004.
The image above is ChatGPT’s impression of a diverse group of multicultural professionals working in a modern office for USAID and the US State Department, capturing the collaborative and optimistic spirit of their mission.
I especially like that the agenda is asking for feedback on a variety of topics, including research best practices, international engagement, foundation models, human impacts, enabling infrastructure, and global equity considerations.