Page 12 - NYY Muscat Call 2022 April 24

no longer be possible except at high cost and special effort. Meanwhile, few hard limits seem
to bound the deployment of AI for destructive purposes, whether by governments, powerful

corporate giants, or outright criminals. On this basis, a special working group, preparing for

the 2022 edition of the Global Forum, set out to define the Muscat principles of AI Ethics.
The initial perspectives on the subject varied starkly – some saw no rationale for considering

ethics at all.

Eventually, presented on October 18, the resulting principles champion rules for the design

and implementation of AI to be trustworthy. In effect, they shape a “living” document, a
maturing process set to evolve from “below”, able to derive from usage and refining by

companies, technicians, and individuals, feeding insight to policymakers, not the other way

12
around.

Ethical principles should henceforth be further advanced and diffused among key actor

categories in order to build acceptance for their application. New collaborative efforts and
alliances will be required along the way to muster backing for their enforcement on terms that

lead towards a future world in which we and our children, and their children, will wish to

live. Myriads of AI applications are at hand to improve the management of water, its
collection, distribution, use and so on. Ethical principles should be devised for such specific

applications.

iii) Incubators, entrepreneurial networks
Enabling infrastructure and support bodies represent critical public goods, including

prototype buildings, mechanisms for testing, venture acceleration, mentorship, investor
readiness, and streamlined access to financing, including seed funding, avenues for tapping

into business angel networks, venture funding and government support structures. Viable
such ecosystems are largely absent across much of the world, including the Middle East and

Africa, representing an underdeveloped realm of opportunity. Combining this with the

rigidity of educational systems, the result is a dearth of growth mechanisms for entrepreneurs
and ground-up innovation at the scene of some of the world’s greatest remaining ecological

resources, whose continued existence is at the mercy of ravaging resource exploitation the

12 AI and Ethics, the Global Forum, 2022.

www.waterandhumanity.com 12