Proceedings of a Workshop

IN BRIEF

September 2019

Artificial Intelligence: An International Dialogue

Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

On May 24, 2019 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, in partnership with the Royal Society, held a symposium entitled Artificial Intelligence: An International Dialogue in Washington, DC. The symposium addressed if and how artificial intelligence (AI) would benefit from further international cooperation. It primarily focused on the aspect of AI known as ‘machine learning’—or ‘deep learning’—as this is an area of increasing attention and rapid technological advancement.

The event also summarized discussions at a day-and-a-half meeting on May 23-24, 2019* convened by the National Academies and Royal Society where 45 scientists, engineers, and other AI experts from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, China, the European Commission, Germany, and Japan discussed key areas of national and international policy on AI where international collaboration would be most beneficial. Among the topics addressed at that earlier meeting and summarized at the symposium are the impacts of AI on the global economy and social cohesion, and the ethical and privacy considerations surrounding its development. Participants in the May 23 meeting also engaged in a broader dialogue of public and private institutional responses to the development of this rapidly changing technology; what role governments, companies, and international institutions can play in its stewardship; and what concretely is needed in order to foster international cooperation.

The symposium was planned by a committee co-chaired by Ajay Agrawal, professor, University of Toronto, and Angela McLean, professor, University of Oxford. It included two keynote presentations on the history of AI, current and near-term capabilities of AI, and the U.S. government’s initiatives to advance AI. A panel of experts then provided a summary of discussions at the May 23 meeting. Comments from the audience sparked further discussion on the state of the technology and questions that remained to be answered, such as how to ensure that AI systems are human-centric.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Jack Clark, policy director, Open AI, summarized the recent history of AI and its near-term future. He described AI “as a phenomenon where machines can sense the world, observe imagery, and listen and compile observations into structured information.” Artificial intelligence can now be used in applications ranging from preservation of the environment, to answering spam telephone calls, to assistance with medical diagnostics. It is progressing extremely rapidly as the result of five decades of federal and commercial support for research and development, algorithmic advances, availability of enormous databases, an open-by-default research culture, and increasingly powerful computers. Indeed, he said, there has been an exponential increase in the computational capacity in large machines over the past six years as well as global algorithmic innovation. He illustrated the rapid growth in AI by describing improvements in synthetic imagery and language processing, both of which have widespread applications. In Clark’s view, areas in which there are shared incentives to collaborate, such as safety, predictability, and robustness of AI, are ideal for international collaboration.

In a second keynote, Lynne Parker, assistant director for AI at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, described current and near-term capabilities of AI and efforts of the federal government to advance AI. Parker began by noting that although there is no agreement on a single definition for AI, the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 defines AI to include, among other concepts, “an artificial system that performs tasks under varying and unpredictable circumstances without significant human oversight, or that can learn from experience and improve performance

* The event also summarized discussions at another meeting convened on May 23 and the morning of May 24 at the National Academies.