ADAPT researcher Arthit Suriyawongkul (Trinity College Dublin) was recently invited to participate in two events that took place in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The two events are part of the “Digital Discourses 2023: Humanity in the Age of AI” conference organised by Goethe-Institut Jakarta, in partnership with Center for Digital Society, Gadjah Mada University, a public university in Indonesia, and EngageMedia, a regional NGO working on digital rights and public accountability. The conference took place on the 6th of October 2023 and featured speakers from across Europe and Southeast Asia.
At the conference, Arthit presented on the topic of “AI Accountability in Europe and Asia” where he discussed three perspectives of public accountability (democratic perspective, constitutional perspective, and learning perspective) and how AI technical operations can be mapped to those perspectives. In his presentation, Arthit compared current AI governance proposals in the EU, Thailand, and Singapore. As outlined by Arthit, the EU and Thailand behave very similarly in that they both have proposed a ‘hard’ law, while Singapore has proceeded with a ‘soft’ law, in regards to industry standards, and have focused on an industry-led approach. The EU may have global influence in AI regulations through a “Brussels effect” while Singapore may have global influence through their solid open source toolkit that has received significant attention from international and national standard bodies.
Secondly, Arthit was invited to join a public event where a representative from the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology presented the country’s plan and progress on AI regulations. Indonesia is in its consultation stage before issuing a Circular Letter on AI ethical principles either by the end of this year or early next year. This document will be a foundation for their AI regulations. A regional NGO invited academia, civil society, and human rights law practitioners to provide input on the matter to the ministry officers of which Arthit featured.
