Delhi declaration urges democratic AI for social good

The India AI Impact Summit concluded on Saturday with more than 80 countries signing the Delhi Declaration, pledging to balance advances in artificial intelligence with a commitment to equitable growth and ethical standards.

"This calls for further international cooperation and multi-stakeholder engagement across our countries along the seven chakra (pillars) of the AI Impact Summit centred around principles of development of human capital; broadening access for social empowerment; trustworthiness of AI systems; energy efficiency; use in science; democratising resources and use for economic growth and social good," the declaration read.

The 86 signatories included the European Union as well the US and the UK, two key nations that had opted out of a global pact on AI at the previous year's summit in Paris. Other major participants include China, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Russia and Canada. All the shared priorities mentioned in the declaration are voluntary and represent non-binding guidelines and principles.


"The entire world has endorsed PM Narendra Modi's human-centric vision of AI Manav at the AI Summit, which has seen 10 lakh visitors," electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday.

The accord introduced new platforms and frameworks as a means of achieving its ends. The charter for democratic diffusion of AI is aimed at increasing access to foundational technical resources. Robust digital infrastructure and affordable connectivity are essential for avoiding an AI digital divide, it said. The proposed global AI impact commons will seek to boost practical applications by acting as a platform for sharing and scaling successful artificial intelligence use cases, especially open-source applications that can be adapted.

The Trusted AI Commons will be a collaborative platform consolidating technical resources, tools, benchmarks and best practices that all can access and adapt to their context. This has been cited as necessary due to the need to build trust and maximise societal and economic benefits of AI.

To accelerate innovation, the declaration calls for removing structural barriers to research infrastructure and taking note of the International Network of AI for Science Institutions to pool global research capabilities.

Recognising AI's potential to uplift all sections of society by providing access to knowledge and services, the collaborative platform has been developed to share learning and scalable practices for social empowerment. Apart from this, voluntary guiding principles on resilient, innovative, and efficient artificial intelligence will bolster the development of systems that will seek to minimise the pressure on resources.

The declaration was inspired by the principle of sarvajana hitaya, sarvajana sukhaya (welfare for all, happiness of all) "for democratising AI resources for the global population," the ministry of electronics and information technology said.