The impact of emerging technologies might be a seminal inflection point in human history that will continually impact all aspects of society over the coming decades. In that, AI is the linchpin accelerating and amplifying the development of all the fields of research. With the rapid development of machine learning in recent years, the governance of the technology has gradually come under the spotlight. It was once possible to keep track of all the research institutes, conferences and policy developments. In 2019, this became an arduous task for researchers and policymakers. The number of initiatives continued to grow. There is a much greater variety of regional perspectives. The diversity of stakeholders participating in this dialogue has increased. The idea that the world urgently needs to find a path towards developing ethical and beneficial AI for all of humanity has become front-and-center in our media and public conversations. Despite the scientific and policy difficulties, it seems that the world is willing to rise up to this challenge. 

One way to think of the governance of AI is that it is a ‘wisdom race’. The late Stephen Hawking once said that “our future is a race between the growing power of our technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let's make sure that wisdom wins.” To take stock of and share the wisdom, we decided to invite 50 world-class experts (44 institutions) to share their views on the key progress in AI governance in 2019. We hope that this can help separate the signal from the noise for interested readers.

To download the full report please click here: AI Governance in 2019