S7 Summit: the G7 of Standardisation (ENG)

Of SMEs and startups. This commitment is key in order to ensure the technical standards effectively respond to their needs and encourage their growth and competitiveness on global markets. The important declarations and important commitments taken by the G7 the previous G7 meetings, together with the commitments taken at G7 in Hiroshima as regards the development and governance of advanced technologies, especially artificial intelligence, underline the importance to protect democratic principles in the technological development. Based on the indications will come out of the first session, the G7 countries will provide answers based on the existing knowledge and the development program of the next technological and technical norms. And we will also talk about standardization in emerging field sectors like enabling technologies for the industry, sustainability of critical raw materials and where to find them, quantistic technology and artificial intelligence. Also, in delight of the decisions and the commitments taken by the ministers of the industry, innovation and technology. Thank you to the technology. Based on consent and oriented to market, we can favor integration among sects by promoting at the same time democratic principles. Moreover, we recognize the importance of sharing best practices to foster the digital transformation of industry, mitigating the risks of adopting new technologies and reaping their full benefits in terms of productivity and sustainability. These seven Summit therefore marks a historic moment with the hope that it will become an annual event that recognizes the role of standardization in ensuring prosperity and well being through closer collaboration with respective governments. Indeed, we invite the G7 countries to consider standardization as an essential ally in achieving economic and social policies, and we thank them for supporting the inclusive involvement of stakeholders in the development of standards, with particular attention to SMEs. I would like to conclude by particularly thanking the Italian government and Minister also for making this first S7 summit possible and for the attention he will give, the direction that will emerge from the summit and which we will present to him in the coming days. We hope that the Summit can become a regular event, fully part of the G7 meetings, so that technical standardization can give its contribution to the policies of the world leaders Technology thank you very much for your attention and I wish you a fruitful day. Thank you for your attention. I have a few other things to say because as you've seen, Minister Adolfo also could not be here physically, given another commitment he had at very last minute and yesterday, yesterday during the night, he sent us a message because he wanted to be here with us, with you. So I have the pleasure to read you the message that the Minister sent us yesterday night. I am really happy to take part in this inaugural S7 meeting, the G7 of standardization, organized by unique this Summit is organized at the end of another meeting held in Trento and Verona that led to the declaration of the Ministries of Industry, Technology and innovation of G7 last the 14th and 15th of March 2024. The challenges that the G7 governments have to face are numerous and complex. Italy this year has the presidency of the G7 and it wanted to bring the industry at the heart of the international agenda, focusing the attention on the deep acceleration that we've had over the past years as regards the integration of new technologies in society and in the productive fabric. Therefore, we need to face the impact of digital innovation on the economic growth and on industrial competitiveness by exploiting at the same time this digital transformation and artificial intelligence in order to evolve our economies and societies in an inclusive and sustainable way. In this context, the exchanges among seven countries in Verona confirmed, among others, the importance of collaboration in order to define standards for digital technologies. In particular, we are assisting to the rise of a global market for quantistic technologies that should include the development and the adoption of appropriate technical standards as well as pre standardization activities. The development of open and voluntary based standards plays a fundamental role also for the next generation of technologies. It has to be in line with our democratic values and principles. At the same time, a great importance is attached to the recruitment of human resources with specific technical skills and share of technical competencies and support to research and development for the industrial adoption of quantistic technologies. In order to effectively support the decisions and commitments taken by the G7 government. Cooperation among the standardization parties will be fundamental also through the sharing of information with public and private stakeholders, indeed activities to define international standards. Moreover, we will have to keep encouraging the development and the adoption of international technical standards through multi stakeholder processes. In addition to that, national standardization bodies have a fundamental role to play in the development of a global market that has to be transparent and based on rules and procurement chains, especially for high hydrogen with low carbon emission. Based on the international principles and certification systems compliant with social and environmental rules. We also have to work in order to develop standards and international certifications, also for a methodology to calculate greenhouse gas emissions. And we need a mechanism, a mutual mechanism in order to trade and to ensure the reliability the transparency as regards the carbon intensity. So the S7 summit represents the importance of our collective efforts in order to shape a sustainable, inclusive and safe future. By working together, the G7 standardization bodies are invited to implement the decision taken by our government to contribute to the development of a more resilient world. We would like to take this opportunity to strengthen our collaboration and to promote a significant change to the profit of all our citizens. Thank you all for your commitment in these collective efforts. Adolfo Orso. Now I would like to invite Mr. Aloka to the podium. I have a presentation, if you can please share it. Good morning everybody.

So first of all I would like to thank Uni in the person of president Rossi and Mr. Lenci for making this event happen. For the kind invitation. I would like to greet the Minister Urso and all the distinguished panelists. And it's truly an honor and a privilege for me to be here today and to open such important and high level events. Business at OECD is the business voice against corruption. With a network of more than 10 million corporations in more than 55 countries, it is the institutional stakeholder for the private sector to the oecd. And through its Anti Corruption Committee, OECD contributed to the development of the OECD Anti Bribery Convention. The Convention is one of the most important tools in the fight against corruption. It establishes legal binding standards. It introduced the holistic approach uniting 46 countries against corruption. On this, let me emphasize two numbers 2024 and 0. 2024. This year is a critical year for the fight against corruption. As the Anti bribery convention turns 25 and could be a tremendous opportunity to change our vision in the fight against corruption. And this brings us to the second second number. 0. 0 is a value. 0 has a value. 0 must be a target as zero corruption. As Chair of the Business at OECD Anti Corruption Committee, I feel a great responsibility and I think that we all have a solemn duty to fight this global cross country cutting issue. We must face it together to guarantee a sustainable future and progress on long term challenges. If we allow corruption to deprive the next generation of key resources such as education, health care, security and safety standards, environmental rights, social wellness, we will inflict an intolerable burden of inequality on our children. For this reason, we must have the courage to admit that it is possible to eliminate corruption. And we must give to this target a proper dignity in the UN SDG agenda. In order to translate this commitment into action, we have issued a manifesto that is based on on OECD standards and best practices. It is a multi stakeholder paper that can be applied by public and private organizations, by business representatives and corporations. The manifesto calls for the treatment of zero corruption as an 18 SDG and puts forward the 10 key actions to build a more resilient as Ministro also underlined, sustainable as the President underlined and corruption resistant as I underline Global economy. These actions are organized in three main clusters which represent the essential essential dimensions in our raised to zero changing the way we think about corruption, creating meaningful tools and taking impactful measures and acting together globally. Now I will go through each action in a very quick way. So first raising to zero, we must force our brain to travel a different pathway breaking biases that corruption cannot be eliminated. And we go on the second action. Why? Because corruption is a crime that undermines human rights. Personally, I believe that anti corruption programs and the human rights assurance measures share the same roots. Because corruption is a cross cutting issue and the benefit from zero corruption have a positive impact on the achievement of the other 17 SDGs. Number four, stimulate responsible conduct. Develop a culture of integrity of transparency of ethics within any context, any jurisdiction, any governments. Regarding the responsible business conduct. I would like to say that this means that profit generated outside ethical boundaries cannot be considered as a profit anymore. This means that there is no trade off between performance and compliance results and rules, business and values. This means that corporations should evaluate their actions not only from an economic and financial point of view, but also considering the social impact of these actions in the context where they happen. In order to allow these, we need to speak the same language. We need shared international standards. Regarding sustainability standards, I would like to say that the B20 integrity compliance task Force, which I have the honor to serve as co chair as the standardization in sustainability as a priority. Number five, Incentivate and protect the brave voices. So whistleblowing is a key instrument in the fight against corruption. And there are also standards for implementing a sound whistleblowing system. Number six, we talked about human rights. Freedom of press is a human rights. We must promote the freedom of press because vigilant media protects our society by uncovering the truth and providing transparency. I will go number seven. This is really important, very important because artificial intelligence, as also the President Rossi said and tech for trust and transparency. Artificial intelligence is a game changer in the fight against corruption. But we have to implement it with the building block approach, taking into consideration also the budget constraints of the small and medium enterprises. In this large corporations have a bigger have a bigger responsibility because they have to implement continuous monitoring systems and then give them to the small and medium enterprises in order to stabilize the supply chain in this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous context where we live. Number eight, it's one word. Global means think global and act local. When we design anti corruption programs, we have to be inspired by global standards, by a global vision. But when we implement them, we have to take into consideration the peculiarities of the local context. Number nine, Zero tolerance. It is self explaining and I go on the last action. Collective action for. For a multi stakeholder approach underlined. Multi stakeholder approach, underlined also by the letter of the Minister. Also, collective action is vital in order to build a resilient and sustainable business ecosystem with zero corruption. Here, governments, civil society, international organizations, businesses, and I add, standards, community must come together as equal partners in order to translate the global commitment into tangible results and level the playing field. Just to wrap up the race to zero corruption is our great responsibility. We must give zero corruption its proper dignity. In the UNSDG agenda, it is possible to eliminate corruption, but it takes courage and this is a practical and necessary step towards a resilient and sustainable global economy. Let me leave you with the essential truth about zero corruption in three sentences. It's on. It's as. It's a must. It's on because it's zero corruption. It's already happening. We pushed the bottom from off to on. It says only together can we make it happen. And it's a must because we do not have plan B. Thank you.

They also asked me to speak English, therefore I will turn to French to make everybody unhappy.

Now I'm just logic.

It's just. That will be my name. Daniel Girondino. Today some of you know me with other hats in relation to my past professional experience. It was 20 years in ISO Assistant Secretary General and in my academic career as well. And there are three subject matters that I have followed very passionately during my career. And they put together standardization and quality, infrastructure, sustainability and innovation and many ways they come together. That was always the focus of my activity to cover them. Today I've been asked to cover the topic of artificial intelligence, and in particular the issue of governance frameworks and the role that standardization can have to shape and support the governance frameworks for AI. But let me just start with a very, very quick wrap up. The origins of AI can be normally considered in 1956 and when a bunch of early computer scientists and theorists of information theory got together in the summer research project at Dartmouth School and they set out the agenda for regional project on artificial intelligence. The idea was based, as they say, on the conjecture that every aspect of learning and feature of intelligence can be simulated, represented, described so precisely, that can be done to a machine to do that. This is particularly overwhelming if you think at the rudimentary stage that information technology had in 56. But then we go fast forward to the 2000 and what happened is the exponential growth of digitalization over, I mean between the 70s and the 2000s and you probably have heard to talk about the Moore's Law with the increase of processing powers of computer has been the growth of the Internet and the explosion of digital data that are around this provides the basis for today's artificial intelligence that would have not been thinkable, concretely speaking at those times before the exponential growth of digitalization. In fact, today's dominant forms of AI are based on artificial neural networks and machine learning and deep learning approaches on artificial neural network. We can talk days about that, but that's not the purpose of today. The important, important, the first breakthrough that happened in deep Learning was in 2012 when Geoff Hinton introduced the convolutional neural network and the back propagation algorithm based on crunching data. And that was the other key contributor, Professor Fei Fei Li, that has worked in tagging an enormous amount of data of images. And the combination of the algorithm developed by Geoff Hinton with his architecture of deep learning and the use of this data has provided the first breakthrough and has proven to be extremely successful and replicated in many ways. Then the second breakthrough came relatively shortly after and it is with the transformer model architecture and the generative AI that has been based on that. We have the GPT which is generally pre trained transformers came out in. And you're all familiar I guess with GPT, GPT, sorry, ChatGPT, 3, 4, etc. That came out, that's the breakthrough in 2018 that has opened absolutely new capabilities for AI. And the large language models that are actually based on this approach have taken up the world and they're growing extensively during these days. So it's a race that has been there. There will be a lot of things to say we cannot do that. It's just to wrap up where we stand now. These technologies and the future Curious, the extremely fast development they had over the past few years that remember was enabled by the exponential growth of digitalization. They're demonstrating unprecedented capability in a broad variety of areas and they're reshaping a lot of things. And just to give a few examples, that's AI is a key enabler of industry4.0, where the idea. I don't talk about industry5.0 because I don't like the inflationary language that is used because the foundation of these things is industry4.0 and it is the idea of establishing flexible manufacturing operations and bringing together cyber and physical system that can work autonomy and do a lot of other things in the factory environment. This is also so AI is a very crucial component in. In many pieces of the industry for zero landscape. Other benefits that you can have that already breakthrough happening in health care, you have major things going on. In transportation, you have a lot of benefits that can be captured by small businesses in the efficiency and the ability to improve the productivity. Next month you will have the I Forgood summit in Geneva organized by the ITU that brings together a lot of things that go in the right direction for AI. And on the left side you have a very impressive things that has been developed recently by the epfl, the Polytechnic School of Lausanne, where a new robot has basically been designed by ChatGPT in interaction with. With people, with scientists. But the key core ideas came from ChatGPT. So that's very interesting and alarming at the same time. In fact, these technologies, they have tremendous potential, but they pose substantial threats. And this is where I focus my attention on the second part of this intervention. Because like many emerging technologies, the issue of, of safety and security is extremely important and for AI is particularly important given its pervasiveness and possibility horizontal nature. Now, some of these threats are evident to everybody. You can see the deep fakes now probably the most famous cases, that of Taylor Swift that has been, you know, invested by an enormous quantity of pornographic deep fakes. But this is for many, many others. There are all the issues related to disinformation in elections, in particular in the democratic process. There are the problems of false information that circulate. Many have identified the very serious threats that AI Positive exposes to jobs in many, many areas. And you have many issues related with intellectual property rights in the sense that you have AI systems that capture and manage copyrighted content illegally and they generate new content based on that. So this is a. And the most, probably the most serious and deadly threat is that of autonomous weapons. There is a lot of issues that I'm not touching today, but this is a very scary nightmare scenarios. Now take into account that in this context, most of the keys are in the hands in terms of core models and technologies. Of a handful is an oligopolistic frameworks driven primarily by the quest for power and profit. And you have just a few guys who are in the seat, front seat in driving this. This for me is really, really, really scary. It shouldn't be like that. Now what can be done to manage the AI threats and to promote benefits for all? The government have a key role and this means comprehensive policy framework that can be developed by governments and. And they can be supplemented by a lot of things and particularly standardization we have key in key jurisdictions some important legislative initiatives. Probably the most important at this stage is the EU AI act that has introduced the first very comprehensive regulation on artificial intelligence. Then you have the White House Executive order on the safe, secure, trustworthy development of use of AI. That's also another important. And you have also things going on in China with a very different approach on regulations for the AI development and many others. But this is just in the G7 has recognized all this and the Hiroshima process that was launched in May 2023 in following the leaders direction at the gate G7 Hiroshima summit started to work on developing a common and comprehensive policy framework that was released in its final version at the end of last year. And this includes in particular three components and particularly focus the attention on two. So it is the Hiroshima process international guiding principles for the safe, security, trustworthy AI. And the second is the international code of conduct of what organizations involved in AI should do in order to abide to the principles and to engage into the development of safe, secure and trustful AI. Then there is another document that's part of the process is the developed by the OECD around the a common understanding of the generative AI and a number of issues related with that now moving forward. Very recently, last month, a few weeks ago, the G7 in Italy has in the Declaration of the Technical Ministers has uploaded the outcomes of the G7 presidency in 2023 and expressed the intention to to further advancing the Hiroshima AI process comprehensive policy framework going forward and towards its application. Now in this context. Sorry, in this context uni among others has been called by the think seven that is the think tank behind the G7 working on quite a number of issues and provide proposing policy briefs to the ministers etc. Has also asked to contribute and we gave a number of a number of proposals along with many others. And there is a policy brief under development that has been taken up by the T7 Secretariat. They asked I was the original author of one part of this brief. This bringing together the contribution of other authors is on its way through the process and we hope that will be accepted and promoted in the context of the G7. So that. And I think I would like to summarize the key points express this and it's very much in line with what is the direction given by the Italian government for the G7 here in Italy. So the idea is to give a set of recommendations that concerns development aiming at operationalizing the principles and the code of conduct, how to put them in practice. And the paper is based on Four elements. One is the strategic role of standardization. Then also the strategic role of scientific collaboration in many ways to basically to put in a nutshell, to produce actually real systems that could be for the public benefit and could counterbalance the power and the extent of the systems developed by the market leader that we've indicated before. Then the critical role of education and particularly embedding human centered values in the development process of AI system is a very critical thing. And then empowering citizens in relation to the use of personal data that that's also another very, very, very big issue. I focus and close with the comment, sorry, the recommendation, the proposal regarding standardization and its take up at the strategic level. Now we know in this context the standardization can be very effective in fostering the adoption of good practices and to provide help to operationalize regulatory goals. However, it is absolutely non trivial and we know that very well as well that to ensure that the contribution of standardization is as effective and timely as required. And the challenges here are particularly severe because it is a multidisciplinary context where you do not have just a technological stream, but many other issues that need to be taken into account. And there is a breakneck speed of development that doesn't cope with the conventional way of developing standards. So this is a challenge and we ask the G7 countries in a coordinated way to provide invaluable contribution to the standards organization forwarding clear input consistently with their support proposed policies to shape strategic direction and prioritization for standardization in AI. So to direct the resources towards what? What are the most important issues to be addressed now and with something that can be delivered quickly. The standardization organization have a big challenge because what they have to do is to ensure that you have a multidisciplinary and multi stakeholder input. But that is provided by highly qualified experts. And you need to reach the top guys in academia, the top guy in research center with the help of the governments. But that is essential. Talking about multidisciplinarity and different type of stakeholders. But capturing top talents into this process. Something that I know is very difficult because sometimes many of these people don't have even idea what is standardization. So this segment really challenging thing, but is the only thing that is may work because you really need super high level competence to drive this process. The second is a transparent roadmap with very well defined priorities and milestones. Something of that is emerging. But this here is Also where the G7 countries can provide very useful contributions. And finally a highly efficient process using all the means possible to provide timely, deliverables this. Yeah, I'm just underlining that this is very, very difficult because these are prohibitively short times. But you need to think of new ways of doing things. Some have already been tested in a limited way. For example, think the standards in the MPEG field. They have put together a model that I think is extremely remarkable. They look at standardization for the future, not for the consolidation of things. They're there. They try to provide the core descriptions, specification, etc. For emerging technology. Sometimes they fail, but they have a process to doing that. Clearly, to select the best pieces of technologies that are available in this case, you need to integrate the input from multidisciplinary scores that come from social sciences, the legal experts. So it's a very, very challenging thing, but can be done. The important thing is not to apply, you know, in a rubber stamp thing. This requires very special approach, very focused approach, and hopefully this could meet the expectation of the government and society at large. So thank you very much for your attention.

First of all,

Thank you again. Well, good morning again, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues and friends. First of all, I'd like to start by thanking uni, the ISO member here in Italy, for your leadership and commitment to international standardization and for having organized this session in the framework of the G7. We have all seen the Declaration of Ministers of Industry issued only a few weeks ago. And for this morning, we would like in this panel focus on two transitions, the green transition and the digital. And transition. And both of them pose formidable challenges. If we talk about a transition, what we mean is a journey actually that we should all embark on. And when we go through this journey, we need to equip ourselves first of all with a strong sense of urgency. So the challenges related to climate change and to digital transition will not wait for us. This is especially true in the case of climate change. We are already seeing the dramatic effect of climate change, not as a promise for the future, is something that is happening today. I was just reading a report saying that during last summer, 70,000 people died here in Europe because of the hit. 70,000 people and a large majority of them women, by the way. So it's happening. 42 million people displaced every year because of the effects of climate change. Daniele spoke very well about the challenges posed by artificial intelligence. That has changed dramatically in the pace that is advancing now. And we are all trying to fix and to improve things, but arriving a little bit late. So first of all, strong sense of urgency. Second, this transition needs to be inclusive and transparent. We need to make it sure that all voices are heard and especially developing countries. It's not just a transition, it needs to be a just transition. The third one is collaboration. We cannot address these challenges working in isolation. We need to combine our talents in a comprehensive manner so we can be really impactful in our efforts. And the fourth key element we need to equip ourselves in this journey is technical expertise. That is absolutely right. We cannot improvise here. We need to have the right skill set and to put the best we have in this conversation. So those are the four elements. And here in the standardization community, I'm the Secretary General of ISO, as you

know,

we ask ourselves, how can we help? How can we contribute to this journey? How can we contribute to this conversation? And there are three elements I'd like to highlight. Number one, readiness. We already have a wonderful portfolio of 25,000 international standards available to be used today, just to name a few. In the area of climate, we have our environmental management standard, we have energy management standard, and we also have our guidelines on Net zero that were left in the development by our member in the uk and I see David Bell here and were launched during COP27. In the area of digital transformation, we have the very first management standard on AI that was launched just a few few months ago. And we also have a very emblematic standard on cyber security. So please do not reinvent the wheel. We have very solid and impactful standards that are already available. That's the first way we can help. The second one is conformity assessment, because this is not only about implementing the standard, is also about being able to demonstrate that it has been properly implemented, to demonstrate it to governments, so we ensure compliance. Also to demonstrate it to the public in general and to our consumers, clients, etc. It is about building trust. It's not only about technical expertise, it's also about how we build trust. And the third key element we can bring bring a very collaborative platform. We have the capacity to engage with other organizations, but we not only have the capacity but the obligation to engage with stakeholders. And we do it in a double layered way. We engage stakeholders at the national level in the mirror committees, but we do it again at the international level when we have our international technical. This is a must in the standard development process. As I like to say, if I write my standards in Geneva with two, three consultants, I can give you a new standard in two weeks. But it doesn't work like that. It's not what we believe in. We believe in a fully inclusive process. When we hear from government, industry, consumers, NGOs, job, et cetera, so needs to be inclusive. And this is something that we bring to the table. So when we talk about inclusiveness, we have this wonderful panel today where we will be receiving free advice from multi stakeholder categories, from governments, from ngo, from young people, from academia, from all categories that you can imagine who will be talking to the leaders of the G7, first of all to inject their perspective in the future discussions. And also they will be giving advice to us, to the standardization community. How do you think that standards can impact this discussion? And what else do we have to do? What do can we can we do better to be successful in this journey? And I will start with Ms. Francis Clement. She is the Canadian Ambassador for Women in AI. Some of our panelists will be participating online. Others are with me here in person. So Madame Clement, you have the floor.

Good morning everyone. It's an honor to be present in front of esteemed delegates from the G7 countries representing the Canadian consumers at the significant S7 summit. I represent Women in AI which is a nonprofit global community of female AI professionals with the mission of increasing representation of women in artificial intelligence. Run by volunteers, Women in AI has 15,000 members globally and presence in over 150 countries. Let's understand the state of women in AI and tech roles. Women's full and equal participation in all facets of society is a fundamental human right. Yet around the world, from politics to entertainment to the workplace, women and girls are largely underrepresented. According to the World Economic Forum, it will take 132 years for the world to achieve gender equality. Women workers earn 80% of what men do. For women of color, migrant women, those with disabilities and women with children, the gap is even greater. Women and girls remain underrepresented across the creation, use and regulation of technology. Globally, only 28% of engineering graduates, 27 of the technology workforce and 22% of the artificial intelligence workers are women. These numbers are even less for black and Hispanic and Asian women. This limits the digital empowerment of women and girls while also hindering the transformative potential of technology. Where does this lead us? There is built in bias in AI. As AI relies on the data available online to learn from and iterate, it risks reproducing and perpetuating societal biases leading to unfavorable outcomes for minorities and underrepresented persons. One known example of this is a secret recruiting tool used by online giant that effectively taught itself that male candidates were preferable. It was trained on data submitted by applicants over a 10 year period. Much of which came from men. AI systems are failing females Algorithms have the potential to amplify historical male bias as well as other often intersecting biases such as race, which risk female patients, safety and outcomes, such as an algorithm that learns typical symptoms of a heart attack from male bias data. Absence of female participation in education, research and industry leads to bias in data, algorithms and results of AI systems. Similarly, lack of diversity in the team that builds AI policy and design will result in flawed design and overall negative impact to the solutions. From my personal experience as an AI professional, we've often been the only women on the AI team with no female leaders to report to. This absence continues to be an issue within the AI field. Lack of women in AI roles can also pose challenges when it comes to security and potential vulnerabilities in the AI space. For example, if an organization is deploying a tool that might interact with a human, perspectives are needed from multiple genders and also cultures that could be overlooked if left to a working group that lacks diversity. So what do we need to ensure we are building AI systems?

Ethically?

Guidelines are necessary for development and use. Absence of standardized practices across various organizations can lead to inconsistency in AI implementation, yielding unpredictable outcomes. By establishing industry good standards, we can ensure that AI technologies adhere to specific quality and safety measures, fostering reliability and trustworthiness. Without universally accepted guidelines, there's a risk of AI being used in ways that could inflict harm or perpetuate biases. AI must be regulated to mitigate potential harm and ensure fairness. In sectors such as healthcare and transportation, where AI plays a pivotal role, inconsistent practices pose significant safety concerns. Standardization is crucial to minimize risk and enhance the safety of critical applications, safeguarding both users and society at large. In this era of rapid AI advancement, standardization is imperative for both success of AI industry and societal advancement. Encouraging value creation while mitigating negative impacts requires standardized approaches. Hence, standardization is not just a choice, but an essential prerequisite. The success of AI to ensure that we build safe, reliable and responsible AI systems, fostering innovation and advancing value creation for humanity. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madame Clement, for highlighting the role of women on AI and also in standardization. And we are working quite hard actually to make sure that we have gender responsive standards. Our next speaker will also be joining online is Mr. Marcus Wright, Director of Technical Regulation and Standardization in Siemens, the eu Germany. You have the floor,

Sergio.

May I ask the Reggie to provide the slide that I had provided? Makes it a little easier for me to get the message across.

I think this the slides are on the Way.

All right, so anyhow, good, good morning. All together there is the slide. That helps me a little with getting, getting my message across. Let us take a look at the emerging challenges more from an industries viewpoint. And definitely the company I am working for is industry being a vendor of industrial goods, placing products onto the markets around the globe. And having said that it is I think self evident. We first of all look at the market access conditions, the technical regulations that we would find in the various target markets we are operating in. And a very nice source for such information on technical regulations stipulating market access conditions is the Technical Barriers to Trade Notification server of the World Trade Organization for which I have brought that little chart on the left hand side, upper corner showing the development over a couple of years in terms of notified technical regulations that would potentially hamper free flow of goods which says that at present roughly 2,000 new technical regulations per year will be registered on the TPT server and another 2,000 come on top which are amendments to existing regulations. If you now look into the content of those regulations as far as they apply to your business. For Siemens, of course that are not all those 2,000 new ones every year only, but less than 5% of them are applying to our industry and engineering business. So if you look at that, you would find that the major domains of technical regulations being set in force or first notified at the WTO are likewise IT and cyber security, also sustainability and environmental aspects and certainly safety both for professional and consumer protection. Now certainly not all of these technical regulations are potentially posing technical barriers to trade. Some of them are perfectly referring to international standards, others don't. I have to say the number of those that rather tend to not refer to international standards are increasing and that gives us a certain concern. Second, what we also observe is especially in very well developed and economically strong countries, a raising number of private sector specification standards. Likewise, just for instance, as an example, the People's Republic of China meanwhile holds a arsenal of almost 50,000 specification standards, association standards they call them, that are of course voluntary by nature, not necessarily stipulating market access conditions, but they may. And that leads us to internally spoken industry, private sector enterprise, internally spoken. It leads us to the risk conclusion that you would see on the upper right side. The impact of this development on industry is of course the increasing effort and cost for product compliance when being ambitious to place products onto any market on the globe. Secondly, there is a certain risk of rather small and medium enterprises that simply cannot stand any longer the increasing cost for product compliance and withdraw from certain markets and of course, we all know it by heart. That is the spirit of free trade, that such a development can hampering the importation of goods and limiting market competition and innovation. But let us not look at the risk side of the interplay in between technical regulation and standardization. Let us rather look at the opportunity. And there is a lot that we can do, definitely both at the legislators side, both at the side of the governments. Also the G7 member states, governments and legislators, as well as the standards developing organizations. First, the legislators, I mean, pretty clear they should aim for an alignment of their major regulations to the baselines jointly developed on international platforms. And there are beautiful deliverables that we have already learned about today. Like Mr. Gerodino told us about the G7 Hiroshima artificial intelligence process. That gives a nice guidance and orientation framework for the design of national regulations or regulatory frameworks for artificial intelligence. And same applies for a lot of other domains like IT security, data governance and sustainability. Partly available from the G7, also from OECD and other international platforms. And once the legislation is ready for release and for setting in force, one must of course make sure that they refer to really international standards and are those being provided by itu, ISO first and foremost and also IEC and some very few others. Looking at the opportunity side for the standardizers for the standards developing organizations. Finally, that has been said before already they gotta rapidly deliver on usable standards for sustainability and environmental area that we have learned from the ISO Secretary General that there is quite a lot available from ISO. Also data governance and Internet of things and artificial intelligence being developed on ITU and ISOIEC Joint Technical Committee one same applies to IT security. And please do not forget see the red, sorry, the green text on the very bottom. Standards for the data interoperability for the quality infrastructure as such. So standards not necessarily addressing product requirements, but more the requirements for the quality infrastructure. That means the accreditation and conformity assessment and certification in the quality infrastructure, as well as the standardization and the market surveillance for these domains of quality infrastructure of countries. We desperately need well performing and sophisticated standards. In the best case, fully digital standards, such as digital twin standards standards for digital product passports that travel along with the products in their supply chains around the globe. Digital certificates of conformity is also an issue that we are looking for new standards and digital calibration certificates, for instance, when it comes to calibrated goods. So this is what we would expect the both parties, legislators and standardizers to do on the standardizer side. Certainly industry can contribute A lot of industry, private sector does quite A lot in terms of expert knowledge, contribution to the making of those standards. This is our commitment and we would be expecting a commitment from the other end, the governments and their legislators to at the end also make use of these standards and have them applied in their regulatory frameworks. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Marcus, for providing the perspective of the industry and also for your strong commitment towards standardization. Now we will hear from government. Mr. Louis Moia is Policy Officer from the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Soverany from France and you have the floor. He will also join online hopefully. I've been advised to go to the next one and the next one is here with us. Sara Mukerji, great to have you. Sarah is the CEO of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment from the UK and happy to have your perspective. Please.

Thank you so much and thank you honoured guests and thank you so much for inviting me here today. It's a real honour to be here. Just very quickly, who we are iema. We're the global sustainability network and professional institution for sustainability experts and environmental managers with more than 22,000 members across 105 countries. And we're delighted to support the incredibly important work both BSI and UCAs in the UK and ISO with our staff team, but also with our expert members globally. And I think it's incredibly appropriate that we should be having this conversation in Oroma of all places, particularly as someone from the uk, because we still use use miles which are not a million miles away, no pun intended, from the Roman miles that we could have at one point walked from my home to Rome using only miles. And I think that's a really good example of how standards shape not just the measurement, but also that they frame how people and societies view themselves, that heuristic embedding of how cultures think of themselves. Now, we've talked a lot and incredibly interestingly and I'd like to thank colleagues for some fascinating presentations. But I would say in terms of our green economy, that standards are fundamental components of the move to a sustainable global economy and equitable economy. And I'll give you three very brief examples. First of all, all around governance. As I said, we have members in more than 100 countries, many in the global south as well. And for them the number one issue is governance. That is the prism through which they see everything else. You cannot get a green economy functioning without good governance. In many parts of the world, the money doesn't get to you, the standards change or local administrations decide things differently. And without good governance and without good Standards, we will not get to a net zero economy globally. Secondly, education, of course, this would be a great, of course, an interest of ours because we're a professional standards body. But the current sustainability profession draws from a very, very small demographic, and we heard that from our program speaker from Canada. It tends to be quite white, it tends to be quite middle class, it tends to be quite educated with standards. Educators have the ability to provide skills and training packages which will allow anybody, regardless of their background, to have access to that global workforce and that marketplace which we know, those of us who work with business is white hot at the moment. People need sustainable skills and people need to get them. And standards, I think, is the key to unlocking that. And thirdly, partnerships. Again, those of us who work with SMEs know that this forest of regulations that are coming for wherever you live in the world, wherever your, your national territory or international territories are, it's difficult for large organizations to cope with that, with the complexity. It's impossible for SMEs. And standards allow good standards, allow proper partnerships across supply chains. So you're not just having a transactional conversation, you're having a proper partnership. Now, we also know, of course, that standards are only as good as people's ability to understand and to use them. And I would draw on my experience as a former journalist. I'm sorry, I am a former journalist for 20 years in terms of communication. Now, I know from personal experience, trying to get editors interested in standards doesn't really tend to happen that much. And I would give you the example of the environmental NGO community. Now, they have managed Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, we have charities such as Surfers Against Sewage, very, very tiny charities with limited resources that get incredible, incredible airtime and get their messages across very clearly. And they do it to a mass audience by talking to the heart first and the brain second. Now, I know there is criticism of some of these NGOs of the way they use science, but I think it's very easy for us to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, that we're so concerned about getting the rigorous the message across, that we fail to get the message across at all. And so I think, again, using the right framing and the right articulation, there are many opportunities, and happy to talk about this a little later, to speak to young people, to people of colour and people from disadvantaged communities, about the transformative and liberating effect of good and well thought through standards. And I think the comments we've been hearing about corruption absolutely nail this you cannot get to an equitable society without good standards on corruption. And just to conclude, I will go back, if I may, to my theme of the ancient Romans. When I talk to my son about how tall he is, he says six foot four. Now that's a young man born 2,000 years after the height of the Roman Empire. And he uses a measurement that would be recognizable to a centurion doing a day's march across the empire. And I think that is such a good example of how a well constructed, well applied and well communicated standard can have a lasting effect on society. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Sarah. That was really great. One comment about what you said, standard being understandable. We've been working quite hard in creating machine readable standards, and definitely we need to do more in creating human readable standards and translate our technical content in something that can be easily understood by a normal person. So thank you for that. And now I think we can come back to Our previous speaker, Mr. Louis Moria, Policy Officer of Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty from France. You have the floor.

Yes. Can you hear me right now?

Do you hear me? Yes. No. Yes, we can.

Okay, that's okay. Okay, thank you. So good morning everyone, and thank you to Uni for organizing this event. As shared by seven leaders, and particularly in the Hiroshima Declaration. The challenges raised by the digital and environmental transition require coordinated action involving a wide range of stakeholders. For instance, connectivity is the backbone of the digital economy. And today, more than ever, the resilience and security of digital supply chains and infrastructures are essential to making our network and those infrastructure more secure, sovereign, resilient, low carbon and sustainable. Meanwhile, the adoption of AI within our societies raises significant challenges and opportunities. As said before, for the emergence of this technology to benefit not just industrialized economies, but the whole world, it is essential to collaborate within a multilateral framework on different topics of the AI value chain, such as talent, data or computing power. As well, we also recognize the potential and therefore the role of AI systems in solving some of the most important challenges facing the world today, including the climate crisis, global health or education. Although from the point of view of public administration, the adoption of AI in public services should first and foremost enable us to progressively modernize public action, thereby contributing to the digitalization effort and offering new services to all citizens. In the plan, the AI toolkit will present the opportunity to work with G7 partners to map AI risk and opportunities in the public sector. In this perspective of those issues, technical standardization represents a relevant tool for building common Solutions that ensure the effectiveness, safety, interoperability and sustainability of digital technologies. This key role of standardization is well understood at the French level with for example, the recent signature of a specific partnership between the French Ministry of Economy, the General Secretat for Investment within the framework of the France 2030 program. The aim of that kind of program is to identify as early as possible the emerging disruptive or green technologies for which standardization work can begin, and then to encourage concrete involvement of the various stakeholders into standardization to support social, green and digital policies. The involvement of all the stakeholders is needed, essential for developing open, inclusive and consensus based common practices. In this regard, we support the multilateral approach developed by G7 and strengthened under the Italian presidency. In this way, we support and encourage the work carried out in the Hiroshima process, both the guiding principles and the Code of Conduct, which target not only AI developers but all players in the AI value chain with a risk based approach that we share. In particular, we support the development of operational tools such as monitoring tools and mechanisms, with work underway at the OECD to enable us to help organization committed to the Code of Conduct to implement the principles. In addition to monitoring mechanism, the kind of conduct could be supported by technical standards on several topics such as watermarking. Thus, many initiatives are underway to meet the challenges of the digital transition, such as AI, quantum, green technologies and so on. And the challenge now is to ensure good articulation between this work and efficient collaboration between the various stakeholders. And we are delighted to see that today event is a good step in this way. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Louis. And thank you for highlighting that standards can be a valuable tool to implement public policy and regulations. We are not policymakers, that's your job. But we help implement those policies through standards. So thank you for that. Now we will hear from the workers who are potentially impacted by all these discussions. So this is really important. We are eager to Hear your remarks. Ms. Ornela Chilona from the trade union sector.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you Uni for having identified trade

unions as one of the stakeholders involved in standardization.

We are in Rome standing, so I can begin my speech with saying, as

Cato Chancellor, an ancient political man in Rome said quickly enough, if well enough.

He meant that if the world change.