UN agency pushes AI ethics standards as US-China tech rivalry deepens

Unesco hosted a forum in Bangkok this week to drive the adoption of its AI ethics recommendations

A United Nations agency is rallying policymakers, non-government organisations and academics to support its ethics guidelines on artificial intelligence (AI) at a time when the technology is rapidly changing the world.

Unesco, the 194-member UN heritage agency that produced the world’s first – and so far only – global AI ethics standards four years ago, hosted a forum in Bangkok this week to drive the adoption of its recommendations. However, there is a long way to go before the recommendations could be turned into a universal, actionable framework amid an intensifying AI race between the US and China, according to analysts.

At the opening on Wednesday of the third Unesco Global Forum on the Ethics of AI, Unesco director general Audrey Azoulay called for collaboration among governments, businesses and civil society to come up with an international solution. “That is what Unesco is working to provide – preparing the world for AI and preparing AI for the world, ensuring it serves the common good,” she said.

The message comes as hopes are dimming for a global consensus on AI ethics. A bipartisan group of US lawmakers introduced a bill in both chambers of Congress to ban the federal use of China-linked AI tools such as DeepSeek, in the latest sign of hostility in the tech rivalry between the world’s two largest economies.

Meanwhile, the world’s largest AI companies, from US-based OpenAI and Google to China’s DeepSeek, were absent from the forum, which attracted more than 1,000 participants and 35 government ministers, mainly from Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America.

When asked how other countries would respond to the divisions in the AI world, Wisit Wisitsora-At, Permanent Secretary at the Thai Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, said Thailand would not take sides in the US-China competition, adding that it would try to develop its own AI ecosystem.

Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who is facing political pressure at home over a leaked phone call with Cambodian strongman Hun Sen, delivered a speech in English, listing her country’s AI development goals, including 90,000 AI professionals and over US$15 billion in spending for AI infrastructure.

With the noticeable absence of American and Chinese government delegations at the three-day event – even though the US rejoined the group in 2023 after its withdrawal during the first Trump administration – the forum provided a stage for policymakers from the Asean region and “global south” countries, from Malaysia and Indonesia to Zambia and Zimbabwe, to voice their ambitions, concerns and priorities in coping with AI.

Irakli Khodeli, the head of ethics at Unesco’s AI unit, said in an interview on Thursday that different countries had their own priorities for now, with some highlighting “security” while others were aiming for “access to AI”.

A key aim of the gathering was to discuss the “readiness assessment methodology”, a tool to turn the UN body’s AI ethics recommendations into policy actions. The assessment includes a questionnaire for governments, asking questions such as, “Is there a specific consideration for the impact of AI on land and water use?”. More than 70 countries have taken part in the methodology.

“It is not a talk shop, it is a workshop for members to exchange notes,” Khodeli said of the event.

At the gathering, some participants publicly outlined the challenges faced in applying ethics guardrails to AI development. Rachel Adams, founding CEO of the Global Centre on AI Governance, a non-profit organisation in South Africa, and author of The New Empire of AI: The Future of Global Inequality, said many civil society groups were having funding problems since US President Donald Trump shut down the United States Agency for International Development.

During a panel discussion at the event, Zeng Yi, dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance and a professor with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said it was not difficult for countries to agree on terminologies such as transparency, but it was much harder to translate them into actual measures on the ground.

Unesco sponsored the South China Morning Post’s trip to the Bangkok event.