On Monday (Sep, 23) a new initiative was announced by the United States government, with eight of the biggest AI companies involved.
The Secretary of State Antony Blinken launched the Partnership for Global Inclusivity on AI to “harness the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) to advance sustainable development globally.”
The scheme will bring together the Department of State, Amazon, Anthropic, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI.
Over $100 million has been committed by the organizations involved to “unlock AI’s potential as a powerful tool for sustainable development and improved quality of life in developing countries, while maintaining an unwavering commitment to safety, security, and trustworthiness in AI systems.”
The partnership will focus on three areas. The first is “Compute: increasing access to AI models, compute credit, and other AI tools.”
The second is “Capacity: building human technical capacity,” and the third is “Context: expanding local datasets.”
The U.S. is excited about AI's potential for the future. In New York, I emphasized to leaders of AI companies that we want the benefits of safe, secure, and trustworthy AI to be shared equitably across the globe–and we are working with our partners to make that a reality. pic.twitter.com/1MYZL7EDdy
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) September 24, 2024
Along with the Partnership, Secretary Blinken has announced further funding. This includes:
- “The Department of State intends to provide $10 million in Foreign Assistance, subject to availability, to close the AI access gap and promote the objectives of the Partnership, including access to compute credits.
- “The Department of State plans to provide an additional $23 million in funding, working with Congress, to promote the responsible use and governance of AI globally, among other objectives, to include programs that leverage AI tools to help countries achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.”
Examples of these initiatives include over $12 million for programs using AI as a tool to “advance democracy, promote human and labor rights, and foster justice and accountability.”
Roughly $5 million in Education and Cultural Exchanges funding for programs that contribute to AI capacity building. Over $3 million for programs to employ AI to identify mis- and disinformation.
A further $1.2 million will go towards developing a Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI Policy Framework and Ecosystem in member states of the Organization of American states. $1.3 million will be used to launch the United States Agency for International Development Responsible AI funding to run AI-related programs.
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