Question: Is Russia participating in the “group of friends of the Hiroshima Artificial Intelligence Process”? If not, is it joining other international initiatives in the field of risk management of generative AI, is it initiating its own? How does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs assess the initiative to create this group?
Answer: The Hiroshima Artificial Intelligence (AI) Process, as well as the “group of friends” (GD) created in its support, are nothing more than another closed “interest club” of Western countries and those who are ready to play by their rules. Moreover, it is based on an extremely ideologized concept of dividing states into “democracies” and “autocracies”. It is significant that joining the initiative (by invitation, not by desire) is presented almost as a “litmus test” of democracy. We categorically reject such a deliberately non-inclusive approach to solving problems that require truly collective efforts by all States. It only leads to unjustified politicization of the issues of international regulation of AI to the detriment of fair and open international cooperation in the interests of all mankind.
Unfortunately, we have to admit that the West is once again trying to create a narrow coalition to form some international “rules” for generative AI that are beneficial to it. This initiative is a new attempt by the United States and its supporters to “stake out” a dominant position in the field of AI. The participants are faced with excessively ambitious tasks – to establish certain “rules of the game” common to states and companies exclusively according to their own patterns.
We firmly believe that the regulation of AI, as well as in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) in general, in a cell format is absolutely unacceptable. It is important to strive to build a universal system of agreements based on the principles of sovereign equality of States, openness and transparency. It is these attitudes that underlie the truly democratic negotiation formats created at the UN on the Russian initiative – the Open-ended Working Group on International Information Security and the Special Committee for the Development of a convention on combating ICT crime – and allow us to achieve balanced, satisfactory results.
We believe that the all-encompassing nature of AI technology requires joint international regulatory efforts at the UN site. Western initiatives in this area, built in the logic of block thinking, in our opinion, in practice condone digital colonialism. In general, it will look like this: first, norms and standards favorable to a certain circle of privileged companies are formed “in a narrow composition”, then the corresponding regulatory framework is imposed as the “gold standard” to the rest of the world. Thus, global digital giants are provided with the most favorable conditions for penetration into new markets and consolidation there in the status of monopolists, followed by the exploitation of data as a new type of resource in the developing world. Of course, we are not satisfied with this prospect.
At the same time, Russia is actively involved in the discussion of constructive initiatives at various venues, including the UN. For example, she became one of the main developers of the draft resolution initiated by China The UN General Assembly “Expansion of international cooperation on capacity building in the field of AI”, which is currently being considered in an interstate format. A substantive discussion on AI issues is underway within the framework of the Russian presidency of the BRICS.
Russia also has its own exclusive developments, which are successfully promoted in the international arena. Thus, the number of signatories from among the relevant foreign structures of the Code of Ethics in the field of Artificial Intelligence developed by the Alliance of Domestic AI Development Companies is steadily growing, the ideological core of which is a human-oriented approach. It is important that the authors do not set any, especially politically motivated, preconditions for joining the Code. This distinguishes the Russian model of interaction from the Western ones, including those practiced within the framework of the Hiroshima Process.
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