The 79th United Nations General Assembly was a milestone for worldwide coordination on AI. Countries adopted the global digital compact and were presented with the report of the UN High level advisory body on AI.
The AI Action Summit aims to build on this momentum, in order to take concrete actions as soon as February 2025. Special Envoy Anne Bouverot took part to the Summit of the future along with Martin Tisné, thematic envoy for Public interest AI and Henri Verdier, French Ambassador for Digital Affairs and thematic envoy for Global AI governance.
On this occasion, they engaged with multiple stakeholders in order to keep building the key deliverables of the AI Action Summit. A focus event convened stakeholders from businesses, governments and civil society to work on a public interest AI initiative ahead of the Summit.
The discussions proved that there is a collective will from stakeholders to take action on AI governance, scientific understanding and accessibility of AI. Countries around the world expressed their concern that AI is being developed far away from their needs and capacities. Policymakers and researchers converged on the need for continuous and collaborative research on capabilities, opportunities, and the whole risk spectrum.
As many participants noted, public interest AI initiatives need to reach a bigger scale to have true impact, which calls for more cooperation between international organizations and across the whole sector. On the other hand many actors, countries and sectors are calling for smaller models and concrete infrastructure set ups to serve their needs.