The 2022 United Nations Activities on Artificial Intelligence Report will be released at this session, and an update will be provided on the opportunities for UN partners to be involved in and contribute to the upcoming AI for Good Global Summit in July 2023.

A High-Level Dialogue The 60-minute high-level political dialogue will provide an invaluable opportunity for policymakers to explore new ways to engage and reach their communities and audiences around child protection online. Led by a representative from the sports environment active in the field of children’s rights, the objective of this session is to allow a tailored conversation on national or global efforts related to child online protection and sports among policymakers leading in the fields of ICTs to examine innovative approaches to leverage on the power of sports to increase children's online safety knowledge and skills. The dialogue aims to provide a platform for meaningful discussions and the exchange of ideas on how to address the challenges faced by children in the digital world. The event will provide a unique opportunity to demonstrate the importance of collaboration and partnership between policymakers, sports organizations, and other relevant stakeholders to ensure online safety of children. Ultimately, the objective of the event is to inspire action and foster positive change in the digital world, ensuring that children have a safe and secure environment to play, learn and grow.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to be a white-hot area of rapid technological development and innovation. Beside the evident benefits, AI technologies embody great risks. To take a recent example, over the past several months, a range of powerful new AI applications has been made available to non-professional users around the world, including large language models such as ChatGPT, and image generation tools such as DALL·E 2 and Midjourney. The sudden availability of these tools has triggered a media and social media frenzy, with widespread public excitement about the new possibilities that have been opened up, but has also raised profound and growing ethical as well as legal concerns about a wide range of issues including the potential for misinformation at scale, reproduction of harmful stereotypes and biases in the texts and images that are being generated, plagiarism, authorship and human creative work, new vectors for cyberattacks, as well as questions about the legitimate and lawful use of online data and artwork by companies producing AI models. These tools are also contributing to immediate and direct challenges to – but also potential opportunities for – creative industries and education, which are being forced to adapt quickly in response. Meanwhile, less high-profile but equally consequential developments and deployments of AI are continuing across all sectors. In many ways, these prominent tools are serving as simply the latest examples of why ethical and responsible approaches to AI are so vital to the responsible deployment of high-impact systems that are likely to reshape our work and daily lives over the coming years and decades. Often developed in Silicon Valley and presented as “experimental” releases – albeit for a global public – it appears there has been little effective corporate assessment of ethical impacts or multi-stakeholder engagement with potentially impacted end users. These recent cases serve to highlight the vital importance of the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI and the need for Member States to begin implementing its values – moving from principles to practice. The Recommendation was adopted in 2021 and serves as a comprehensive and actionable framework for the ethical development and use of AI that encompasses the full spectrum of human rights. It is intended to provide the foundation to identify, think through, and begin to address the kinds of ethical concerns mentioned above, as well as many others. As it now progresses to the operationalization phase, UNESCO is working to develop and pilot tools to help Member States implement the values and principles contained in the Recommendation, including a Readiness Assessment Methodology and Ethical Impact Assessment. With reference to recent developments, this panel focuses on the need to embed ethics at every stage of the AI system lifecycle and use UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of AI in order to ensure a responsible and human-rights-based approach to ethical AI governance encompassing design, development, deployment, and procurement. in a mutually supportive, inclusive, and holistic manner.

The aim is to understand the benefits and risks from the perspectives of different stakeholder groups – the users, producers of EdTech, the regulators, and academics. Digitalisation of education is promoted by national governments, international organisations, and technology firms. Indeed, the education technology market is one of the fastest growing tech sectors, with the global EdTech expenditure reaching about $300B in 2022. The hope is that digital technologies will increase access to education, inclusiveness, improve fairness, precision, and efficiency in education, and free it from human bias. However, technology is not neutral. Political and economic agendas as well as existing biases can be baked into code. Automated decision-making (ADM) algorithms used in the public sector can disproportionately and negatively affect already marginalised people. The consequences of using such tools may perpetuate social inequalities. Whether the implementation of digital technology in the education sector brings about more fairness and social justice depends on how it is designed and used.

Leveraging AI to tackle the challenges of climate change in Africa Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents in the world to climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In 2022, every part of the continent was affected by extreme weather events, ranging from wildfires in Algeria to catastrophic flooding in South Africa. In addition the the human lifes lost during flood, cyclone,..., it is also increase extreme poverty. The vast majority of the continent’s populations living in the rural areas also lives in extreme poverty. The enhancement of sustainable agricultural and rural development is therefore fundamental to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Africa, particularly the eradication of hunger and poverty. Thus a lot of african depend on agriculture and the climate change effect has a strong negative impact in their lives. Thus, We are organizing a workshop on March 16 in Geneva during the WSIS Forum entitled : Artificial Intelligence for Climate change in Africa The purpose is to use AI to address some of the critical issues of climate change affecting population and agriculture and to showcase initiatives or solutions that are tackling those challenges. About the Digital Coalition Our NGO “Digital Coalition” is a registered NGO w/ Ecosoc Status. We are active in the field of digital, women empowerment. Links: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-africas-unreported-extreme-weather-in-2022-and-climate-change/#:~:text=Africa%20is%20one%20of%20the,catastrophic%20flooding%20in%20South%20Africa. https://www.afdb.org/en/topics-and-sectors/sectors/agriculture-agro-industries/african-agriculture

Over the past couple of decades, Lithuania has undergone an impressive digital transformation journey, evolving from a "digital dilettante" in the early 2000s to a nation that now ranks highly in global digital government indexes and boasts numerous digital success stories. As Lithuania celebrates its 100th anniversary of membership in the International Telecommunications Union, it's a momentous occasion to reflect on the country's digital achievements, the effective strategies employed, the valuable lessons learned, and the benefits that can be shared with other nations around the world. During this session, participants from both the public and private sectors will share their perspectives, discuss the practical "tips and tricks" they have discovered on their journey to digital transformation and offer insights into what has worked, why it has worked, and how these successes can be replicated. Through intergovernmental and intersectoral cooperation and co-creation, this session will advance the practical implementation of the World Summit on the Information Society's vision to establish human rights based, inclusive, and development-oriented information society worldwide.

Nearly 3 billion people are still unconnected, deprived of the possibilities the Internet offers. Communities living in rural, remote, and low-income areas are the most affected. They are building their own solutions to change that, including municipal and community networks, cooperatives, and other complementary access solutions. But they have two main challenges: the lack of skills and funding to build and maintain sustainable Internet infrastructure. This workshop will explore how a focus on capacity building can help achieve the SDG 9 and the SDGs in general, sharing past experiences and key learnings.

Around half of the world’s schools are offline, and 1.3 billion children have no access to the Internet at home (UNICEF and ITU, 2022). This digital exclusion particularly affects the poorest, girls and those with disabilities, denying them access to learning resources online, the option to learn remotely, and the opportunity to develop digital skills. United by a shared commitment to leave no children behind, UNICEF and ITU joined forces in 2019 to create Giga, a unique global partnership to connect every school in the world to the Internet and every young person to information, opportunity, and choice. To date, Giga has connected 2.1 million students and 5,700 schools to the Internet, mapped 2.1 schools, established 16 partnerships, and mobilized $1.1 billion. The emphasis on setting standards and targets for universal and meaningful connectivity reflects countries’ experience that the quality of connectivity matters. Meaningful school connectivity means fast, reliable and affordable access to the Internet, allowing for skill development, use of ‘smart’ devices, and safe navigation. The United Nations Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology and ITU have established a set of aspirational targets for 2030 for universal and meaningful digital connectivity. These set a minimum connection speed target of 20 Mbps per school, or 50 kbps per student for schools larger than 400 students. Achieving these targets, however, requires strong commitment and substantial resources, both technical and financial, by all parties involved, including governments, international organizations, the private sector and civil society. In addition, given the rapid pace of innovation in digital learning, these targets must be regularly assessed and updated to reflect the evolving requirements of teachers and students. Giga and the Governments of Switzerland and Spain will co-host a session at the 2023 WSIS Forum on universal and meaningful school connectivity, with the following specific objectives: To present Giga, the UN system’s flagship initiative on school connectivity, which has developed a number of open-source data and technology products for meaningful school connectivity. To highlight challenges and opportunities, including technical, political and financial, to achieve universal and meaningful school connectivity by 2030. To explore experiences and perspectives on the level of bandwidth required for meaningful school connectivity and how it can be financed.