UN official calls for globally inclusive AI data availability

China

UN official calls for globally inclusive AI data availability

2025-03-02 15:39 Last Updated At：19:17

A senior United Nations (UN) official called for efforts to close the global digital divide in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) and highlighted the need for international governance frameworks for the burgeoning technology.

Tshilidzi Marwala, under-secretary-general of the UN, sat down with China Global Television Network (CGTN) on February 24, the first day of his official visit to Beijing as the rector of United Nations University, to discuss a wide range of topics including AI.

The UN official highlighted the need to wipe out illiteracy in emerging technology fields, noting that in this era, literacy is no longer just the ability to read and write, but also includes the ability to handle complex technologies such as AI.

He put forward several key objectives, including improving the Global South's access to databases and resources and expanding the utilization of technologies for more widespread benefits.

"We need to deal with the issue of data, because you cannot bridge the digital divide unless you ensure that data is available. Normally these AI systems require large databases that have to be running in countries, and unless we deal with that issue and ensure that all these data centers are not just located in the Global North, but are also located in the Global South. And I also think another issue that is important when it comes to the issue of the digital divide," he said.

"It's really the issue of how do you use these tools to improve the lives of people. And now this is the teaching of the utilization of these technologies to improve economies, to improve education and to improve all aspects of our lives," said Marwala.

Speaking on the increasingly prominent issues of fairness and safety in the field of AI, the UN official said that international cooperation must be carried out to form sound policies and ensure access to the necessary infrastructure.

"Some of the governance must be done by industry, some of the technical standards can only be done by technical experts who are the experts themselves, some of these standards must be done at the country level. We have been impressed by the governance models of the Chinese government. But some of them must happen at the international level. You can't deal with the crucial issue of cross border data flow unless we cooperate as a globe. I think this is very, very important. So the role of ensuring that we use international cooperation to make sure that we bring fairness is quite crucial," said Marwala.

The UN under-secretary-general emphasized that the core values of AI must be based on the UN Charter to shape an AI that is responsible and sustainable.

Truth of Nanjing Massacre allows no distortion: Canadian historian

A Canadian historian has shed light on how the horrors of the Nanjing Massacre were largely forgotten in North America, making it susceptible for distortion and denial of crucial facts.

In an interview with China Media Group (CMG), David Wright, an associate professor at the Department of History in the University of Calgary's Faculty of Arts, emphasized that the truth of the massacre in Nanjing is beyond dispute, yet several generations later, the West has not adequately preserved the memories of this history.

"My mother's and father's generation, they were alive when the Rape of Nanking happened. They were horrified to listen to reports on radios. And especially after the war was over, when the Tokyo war crime trials began, a lot more detail about the Rape of Nanking came out. In North America, the wartime generation remembered it and remembered it well. But then the next generation, my generation, baby boomers, that abhorrence was not passed on to us adequately well," Wright said.

The notorious Nanjing Massacre by Japanese troops led to over 300,000 deaths in 1937. According to the historian, the accuracy of this figure is supported by a robust body of evidence, but Japan's right-wing forces have nonetheless attempted to deny the number of victims as well as the severity of the crimes. Often, these claims rely on the absence of physical remains of the victims.

"They're dumped into the river. They're burned, a lot of them. You cannot find the remains. So they think they can find one or two errors you've made about photographs and from that conclude that the entire Rape of Nanking never happened. It's just nonsense. There is abundant evidence that something very, very terrible did happen in Nanjing," Wright said.

"And the people who deny it, I mean, historically they are nihilists. For them, history is all about image, not about fact. And if that thing really did happen in Nanjing, that's an inconvenient fact and they want to try to erase it by denying it," he added.

The Nanjing Massacre occurred after Japanese troops captured the then-Chinese capital on Dec. 13, 1937. Over six weeks, they killed approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers in one of the most barbaric episodes of World War II.