The Secretariat of the CAI organised a Day 0 session at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum 2023 in Kyoto on 8 October 2023. The session was called “Shaping artificial intelligence to ensure respect for human rights and democratic values” and was opened by Deputy Secretary General Bjørn BERGE. The Chair of the CAI, Ambassador Thomas SCHNEIDER, moderated the panel, which included Ivana BARTOLETTI (WIPRO, the Women Leading in AI Network), Francesca ROSSI (IBM Fellow and AI Ethics Global Leader), Merve HICKOK (CAIDP), Daniel CASTAÑO PARRA (Universidad Externado de Colombia) participating on-line and Dr Liming ZHU (CSIRO of Australia) and Professor Arisa EMA (University of Tokyo, RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project and member of the Japanese Delegation in the CAI) attending in-person.

The discussion connected the in-person and online participants with the panel representing different stakeholder groups (domestic and international standard setters, industry and academia). There was a general agreement that the extraordinary benefits of AI technologies should serve humanity, making life better for everyone. However, this important progress should not come at the price of human rights or democratic values. The panelists and public were of the view that at an international level it made sense to develop a common legally binding approach to basic principles which should govern how the AI is designed, developed, used and decommissioned. Such approach should be based on the existing and widely accepted international human rights standards. Individual presentations by the panelists were followed by a lively discussion involving both in-person and online participants.