Promoting responsible AI standards

AI safety institutes have a vital role to play in bringing together technical, ethical expertise from around the world and develop voluntary, interoperable standards

- MARTIN EBERS KAZIM RIZVI

AS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) advances, countries worldwide are recognizing the need for national and international governance to address its benefits and challenges. One of the key questions in AI governance is how to foster innovation and cross-border trade, while upholding fundamental values and rights. We argue that the International Network of AI Safety Institutes (INASI) is the right forum to bring together technical and ethical expertise from around the world to develop and adopt voluntary, interoperable standards for AI—standards that are both technical and ethical.

Despite growing attention to the need for effective AI governance, there is little consensus on how to achieve it. Recent global agreements, such as UNESCO's AI Recommendation and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's AI Principles, acknowledge fundamental values such as human dignity, autonomy, fairness, and transparency. But the broad and ambiguous language of these frameworks leaves room for varying interpretations, reflecting different political and ethical priorities. Key obstacles to establishing global rules for AI governance include competing national interests, divergent regulatory philosophies, absence of robust accountability mechanisms, militarization of AI, technological hegemony, and limited political will.