SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea convened on Monday an international summit seeking to establish a blueprint for the responsible use of artificial intelligence in the military, though any agreement is not expected to have binding powers to enforce it.
More than 90 countries including the United States and China have sent government representatives to the two-day summit in Seoul, which is the second such gathering.
At the first summit held in Amsterdam last year, the United States, China and other nations endorsed a modest “call to action” without legal commitment.
“The summit is expected to yield a blueprint for action, establishing a minimum level of guard-rails for AI in the military and suggesting principles of responsible use of AI in the domain,” a senior South Korean government official said, declining to be identified since they were not an official spokesperson for the event.
“There are already principles laid out by NATO, by the U.S. or multiple other countries, so we tried to find the converging area and reflect that in this document.”
It was unclear how many nations attending the summit would endorse the document on Tuesday, which is aiming to be a more detailed attempt to set boundaries on AI use in the military, but still likely lacking legal commitments.
The summit is not the only international set of discussions on AI use in the military.
U.N. countries that belong to the 1983 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) are discussing the need for potential restrictions on lethal autonomous weapons systems with an eye for compliance with international humanitarian law.
The U.S. government last year also launched a declaration on responsible use of AI in the military, which covers broader military application of AI, beyond weapons. As of August, 55 countries have endorsed the declaration.
The Seoul summit, co-hosted by the Netherlands, Singapore, Kenya and the United Kingdom, is pushing to ensure there continues to be multi-stakeholder discussions in a field where technological developments are primarily driven by the private sector, but governments are the main decision makers.
About 2,000 people globally have registered to take part in the summit, including representatives from international organisations, academia and the private sector, to attend discussions on topics such as civilian protection and AI use in the control of nuclear weapons.
(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Ed Davies and Lincoln Feast.)
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