ITU Plenary Assembly: Countries of the South demand participation in AI | heise online

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Since Monday, the plenary assembly of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has been meeting in Doha. Every four years, it sets the work programme of the UN organization responsible for telecommunications. The agenda includes artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity and satellite services.

The past decades have been marked by efforts by individual states to incorporate internet coordination tasks into the ITU mandate.Against this stood a coalition of Western states, internet companies, and a technologically sophisticated civil society.

More or less internet regulation?

Now, among other things, the question in Doha is: Should the Internet Working Group receive an expanded mandate, as some Arab countries propose, be opened to businesses and organizations at the Europeans’ request, or be abolished entirely, as the United States advocates?

A major issue for this plenary assembly is the ITU’s role in the field of artificial intelligence. The trending topic of AI affects ITU provisions concerning IoT, smart cities, broadband and the internet, as well as new technologies. Meanwhile, Global South countries insist on not being left behind in AI development.

“After Partner2Connect, we need a Partner2Compute,” demanded Saudi Communications Minister Abdullah bin Amer Alswaha. With Partner2Connect, the ITU intends to work with the private sector to connect the two billion people who still lack direct access to a communications network. To this end, the organization has collected 122 billion US dollars from partners in 149 countries.