Southeast Asia mulls more business-friendly approach to AI rules - report
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Southeast Asian nations are going for a business-friendly approach to artificial intelligence, or AI, regulation, Reuters reported citing an internal draft of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN.
The draft titled, "guide to AI ethics and governance," is a potential setback to the EU's push for globally harmonised rules which are similar to its own tougher guidelines. In July, EU's push for tougher AI rules had seen a tepid response in Asian countries.
The document is being being circulated to technology companies for feedback and is anticipated to be finalised at the end of January 2024 during the ASEAN Digital Ministers Meeting, the report added.
Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (GOOGL) Google, Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) Meta (META) and IBM (NYSE:IBM) are among the companies which have received the draft.
As per the current version of the draft, the ASEAN's AI guidelines requests companies to take countries' cultural differences into consideration and does not have unacceptable risk categories. Like all ASEAN policies, the potential rules are voluntary and are supposed to guide domestic regulations, the report noted.
Technology executives noted that ASEAN's relatively hands-off style is more business friendly as it curbs the compliance requirements in a region where local laws are already complex and permits for more innovation, according to the report.
The guide, which is expected to be reviewed periodically, asks governments to help companies via research and development funding and sets up an ASEAN digital ministers working group on AI implementation.
The guidelines also advise companies to set up an AI risk evaluation structure and AI governance training, however has left specifics to companies and local regulators, according to the report.
In addition, the guide also warns of risks linked with the use of AI for misinformation, deepfakes, and impersonation. However, leaving it to individual nations to decide the best way to respond.
"We see it as putting 'guardrails' for safer AI," an official said to the news agency. "We still want innovation."
Senior officials in three ASEAN countries noted that they are bullish on AI's potential for Southeast Asia and think that the EU was too quick to go for regulations before the harms and gains of the technology are fully understood, as per the report.
EU is struggling to create global consensus on how to regulate AI.
"We are not seeking full harmonisation, as we are mindful of cultural differences, however, we regard the underlying principles as important," a European Commission, or EC, spokesperson told the news agency.
EU officials told the media outlet that it would continue discussions with Southeast Asian countries to align on broader principles.
Earlier this week an EC official noted that EU saw convergence with Japan on how it looks at generative AI. However, Japan has looked at more easier approach, closer to what the U.S. has than the EU, to strengthen economic growth.
Governments globally are mulling how to mitigate the risks of emerging AI technology, which can reshape economies and the global security arena.
The U.N. Security Council held its first formal meeting in July to discuss risks of security and misinformation with the use of AI. The same month, several tech companies, including Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft (MSFT) made voluntary commitments to the White House to implement certain measures for the safe use of AI.
Generative AI services have taken the world by storm, since the launch of ChatGPT. Companies have launched their own large language models, or LLMs, which can provide services such as content and image generation, to name a few. Google's Bard, Baidu's (BIDU) Ernie Bot, Alibaba's (BABA) Tongyi Qianwen and Tongyi Wanxiang, OpenAI's upcoming text-to-image AI tool DALLÂ·E 3, Meta's AudioCraft, SeamlessM4T, and Llama 2, and Getty Images' (GETY) model called Generative AI by Getty Images, are some of them.

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