UN tech envoy talks AI governance and the private sector
Amandeep Singh Gill, the U.N. secretary-general's envoy on technology, says new efforts such as the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and India’s AI Impact Summit can help shift power and opportunity toward the global south.
Artificial intelligence is being debated in dozens of global forums at once, most prominently at last week’s India AI Impact Summit in Delhi. But Amandeep Singh Gill, the United Nations secretary-general's envoy on technology, admitted that the multitude of concurrent conversations means fragmentation when it comes to the sector’s regulation, governance, and technology development. Earlier this month, the U.N. appointed the 40 members of an Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence — despite two dissenting votes from Paraguay and the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump’s current administration has been openly skeptical of multilateral rule-setting and favors market-led approaches to AI, which has made consensus an uphill battle. “We’ve kind of now moved into more of a member state-owned approach to AI governance. My hope is that leadership broadens on this issue, and many more countries step forward and say, you know, we will lead on some aspect of this,” Gill said, comparing the potential trajectory of leadership on AI to that of development itself. With recognition of AI’s potential uses in global development contexts, major AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic are rapidly becoming part of the sector, shaping how health systems diagnose disease, how farmers access information, and how governments deliver services. One example is Horizon 1000, a new partnership between the Gates Foundation, OpenAI, and the governments of Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria to deploy AI-enabled tools across 1,000 primary health care clinics. The challenge, Gill said in an interview for Devex’s new special edition podcast series, Global Progress in the AI Era, is to connect the relevant players without pretending one-size-fits-all AI governance is possible. “One of our goals for this year is to work with the private sector to understand how they are applying AI governance on a day-to-day basis [because] sometimes the national legislation is missing,” he said, adding: “I think we need more diverse participation in innovation. Innovation, particularly with the development perspective, cannot be driven from a few geographies.” For Gill, the question is whether today’s patchwork can be wired together fast enough to prevent a future where low- and middle-income countries cannot help set the standards for how AI is built and used, are excluded from its benefits, and are instead left as testing grounds for systems making high-stakes decisions about their future. The proliferation of AI forums may look messy, Gill conceded. But initiatives such as the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI — which Gill said has a roughly equal balance between global north and global south among its members — and India’s AI Impact Summit can serve as crucial bridges for developing countries aspiring to close the AI divide. “The intense feeling [is] that we don’t want to be left out of this technology,” he said. “We missed the first industrial revolution, the second one, the third one. We don’t want to miss this one.” As the U.N.’s top technology diplomat, Gill has to navigate between two very different cultures: a multilateral system often criticized for moving too slowly, and Silicon Valley, which was built on speed and disruption. “I think governance is not only a brake on risk, but it can be — if it's proactive, science-led — can be an accelerator of opportunities,” he said. “So, for instance, to identify where AI can do the most good in the fastest possible time, or anticipating some of the things that will make development challenging — job displacement, for example, what's coming around the corner? So far, we've only had ad hoc work on this.” The U.N. panel will be able to do more systematic reporting on the opportunities and risks of AI, he said, adding: “I think it's a good start in terms of building a common understanding, shared understanding of the opportunities, risks and implications, and having more science-informed policy approaches, including in the sense of pursuing where the opportunities are the most exciting.” <a class="spreaker-player" href="https://www.spreaker.com/episode/global-progress-in-the-ai-era-governing-the-ai-moment-from-global-dialogues-to-real-development-impact--70246733" data-resource="episode_id=70246733" data-width="100%" data-height="200px" data-theme="light" data-playlist="false" data-playlist-continuous="false" data-chapters-image="true" data-episode-image-position="right" data-hide-logo="false" data-hide-likes="false" data-hide-comments="false" data-hide-sharing="false" data-hide-download="true" data-title="Global Progress in the AI Era — Governing the AI moment: From global dialogues to real development impact">Listen to "Global Progress in the AI Era — Governing the AI moment: From global dialogues to real development impact" on Spreaker.<script async src="https://widget.spreaker.com/widgets.js"></script></a> Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, or search “Devex” in your favorite podcast app.
Artificial intelligence is being debated in dozens of global forums at once, most prominently at last week’s India AI Impact Summit in Delhi.
But Amandeep Singh Gill, the United Nations secretary-general's envoy on technology, admitted that the multitude of concurrent conversations means fragmentation when it comes to the sector’s regulation, governance, and technology development.
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Catherine Cheney is the Senior Editor for Special Coverage at Devex. She leads the editorial vision of Devex’s news events and editorial coverage of key moments on the global development calendar. Catherine joined Devex as a reporter, focusing on technology and innovation in making progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to joining Devex, Catherine earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale University, and worked as a web producer for POLITICO, a reporter for World Politics Review, and special projects editor at NationSwell. She has reported domestically and internationally for outlets including The Atlantic and the Washington Post. Catherine also works for the Solutions Journalism Network, a non profit organization that supports journalists and news organizations to report on responses to problems.
