New Delhi's turn to steer Al governance

Last week, President Joe Biden's Executive Order set a new course for the United States (US) on Artificial Intelligence (AI) safety and security, signalling a turn towards more robust standards. 

- Vivan Sharan

The order commits the US to collaborate internationally on Al governance. Hot on the heels of this move, India joined 27 other countries in adopting the Bletchley Declaration, a commitment from the recent UK-led AI Safety Summit convened by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, that acknowledges the need for a global alliance to combat AI-related risks such as disinformation.

The exact shape of the proposed international cooperation on AI remains undefined in these proposals. This gap in clarity precedes India's role in chairing the upcoming Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) Summit this December. The G7 nations and India, among others, formed the GPAI in 2020, which now consists of 29 jurisdictions. GPAI invites a spectrum of stakeholders, including academia, industry, and civil society, to the AI governance table. This sets the stage for a crucial question: In what ways can India shape the global governance of AI- a technology already interwoven into our daily lives?

To find the answer, we can look at the evolution of the governance of the internet itself. Broadly, the internet is divided between a services layer and an infrastructure layer. The former consists of applications and content and is regulated by States while the latter requires a more global management because it is interconnected. The conflict between a not-quite-perfect multi-stakeholder approach and sporadic State-controlled multilateralism has marked the history of standard-setting that governs the infrastructure layer.