Check against delivery.
Dear Prime Minister Miloš Vučević,
Dear President of the National Assembly, my dear friend [Ana] Brnabić,
Ministers, Distinguished Guests, colleagues, friends all,
A very warm welcome to this Summit of the Global Partnership on AI – the first since we announced our new Integrated Partnership in July.
Thank you to Serbia for hosting us here in Belgrade as incoming co-Chair.
Thank you also to India and the Slovak Republic for steering the development of this new Integrated Partnership as co-chairs, so far bringing together 44 countries from around the world into this global partnership on AI.
This Partnership will help foster the policy environment we need, globally, to support the further development and deployment of AI’s massive potential benefits for humanity.
The upside opportunities are indeed both exciting and enormous.
You all know what they are.
In terms of improved efficiency, productivity and growth.
Enabling breakthroughs in research and innovation.
Delivering personalised and tailored access to high quality health care services and education.
Facilitating improved data driven decision making.
In terms of the environmental benefits it can help deliver, supporting climate modelling, energy efficiency or more sustainable agriculture through precision farming.
But as with every exciting and rapidly developing technology, there are new and evolving risks and disruptions that need to be mitigated and well managed.
From ethical considerations to issues related to the AI driven disruption of labour markets, potential security threats, privacy concerns, with issues related to the risk of anti-competitive AI driven dynamics driving increased inequalities of opportunity in and across markets, environmental concerns related to the use of AI given the high energy intensity involved with large AI models and more.
So as we work to seize all the benefits of AI we need to work together to develop and deploy policy and regulatory best practice to help ensure the responsible development of AI in an environment were risks and disruptions are appropriately mitigated and managed – ideally in a globally well-coordinated and coherent way.
That is why the objective of this Global Partnership on Artificial AI then is to advance human-centric, safe, secure and trustworthy AI, to foster the responsible development and use of AI, promoting innovation in a way that is aligned with human rights, fairness, inclusivity and sustainability.
Towards this, your discussions today will be an opportunity:
- to exchange views on the latest AI developments and challenges,
- to identify solutions to guide the responsible, human-centric development and use of AI, and
- to set a forward-looking, inclusive vision for the Integrated Partnership.
The OECD’s evidence-based analysis and advice can help make this vision a reality.
Our work is grounded in our globally recognised OECD AI Principles, which are designed to help facilitate global AI policy interoperability.
We are now helping countries move from the AI Principles to policy practice, and ultimately to optimise AI’s potential, while managing the potential risks and disruptions.
The OECD.AI Policy Observatory has gathered over 1000 AI policies from over 70 jurisdictions, including emerging and developing countries, to help identify policy best practice.
We are working closely with international partners, including the UN, supporting implementation of the Global Digital Compact through an enhanced collaboration on AI.
We are providing analysis in support of the AI Summits in the UK, Korea and, next, in France in February.
And we are supporting the G20 and the G7, including through our work to advance the outcomes of the G7 Hiroshima AI Process, by developing a monitoring mechanism to support the application of the Hiroshima AI Process Code of Conduct.
We will draw on this work and bring our latest evidence and analysis in support of the new Integrated Partnership, which also benefits from a deep network of experts and inclusive, equal-footing participation.
Your discussions over the next two days will help shape the Partnership’s work across several priorities:
First, on supporting countries in developing and implementing national AI policies.
Data from the OECD.AI Policy Observatory show that the number of national AI strategies and other AI policy initiatives are growing – from only a handful of national AI strategies in 2016, to over 50 national strategic and government-wide initiatives in 2024.
The Integrated Partnership will help provide guidance to policymakers as they design and evaluate these initiatives, with an implementation toolkit for the OECD AI Principles.
The toolkit will enable a detailed and actionable assessment of countries’ implementation of the AI Principles and help identify opportunities for improvement.
And it will provide region-specific practical guidance, and policy options for different AI readiness levels.
Second, on supporting countries in benchmarking and measuring their AI ecosystems and policies.
We are developing an OECD AI Index, which will provide policymakers and the broader public with a user-friendly tool to understand countries’ AI environment, including dimensions like AI patents, AI investment, compute infrastructure, and AI skills demand and supply.
And to support the implementation of AI Principle 2.2, which calls on countries to create an enabling ecosystem for AI, we are also developing a database to track public cloud computing resources across countries.
Our database will help countries in improving their understanding of AI compute and its relationship to the diffusion of AI, improve the implementation of AI strategies, and inform future policy and investments.
Third, strengthening AI safety.
Artificial Intelligence holds significant promise in advancing digital security, for example by identifying patterns and detecting cybersecurity threats rapidly and consistently.
At the same time, AI can also amplify digital security risks, with our data showing a 53-fold increase in generative AI incidents and hazards reported by reputable news outlets globally since late 2022.
Building on our OECD AI Incidents Monitor, the Integrated Partnership can advance ongoing international efforts on AI safety by developing a common, consistent framework to report AI incidents and hazards.
Fourth, addressing the environmental impact of AI.
AI has significant potential to help our economies and societies tackle climate change, including by helping forecast and optimise energy consumption, and boosting productivity across sectors.
But the training and use of large-scale AI systems can also require massive amounts of processing power, memory, networking, storage and other resources, which can have significant environmental footprints.
The Integrated Partnership in cooperation with other international partners will develop a technical standard to measure the environmental impact of AI, to help countries identify priorities and assess the effectiveness of their policies in this area.
In closing,
We look forward to continuing to build on the respective foundational achievements of the OECD and the Global Partnership on AI so far to drive the international policy cooperation we need to ensure AI reaches its full potential.
The Integrated Partnership has unique potential to make a real contribution, as a platform for:
- multistakeholder engagement to share knowledge and experiences on AI policies,
- enhancing the evidence base on AI developments and impacts,
- identifying best practices,
- and developing policy standards and guidance,
Ultimately, to ensure safe, trustworthy and human-centric AI.
I wish you an excellent Summit.
Thank you.
Working with over 100 countries, the OECD is a global policy forum that promotes policies to preserve individual liberty and improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.