With tech industry players rolling out shiny new AI investments on the banks of the Hudson River, international leaders gathered across Manhattan on the East River, coalescing for September’s annual UN General Assembly session — a global forum on big issues like sustainable development, ending armed conflict, and, amid it all, artificial intelligence.
Neil Sahota, CEO of AI research firm ACSILabs, was present too, a longstanding UN AI advisor and early AI R&D specialist. Twenty years ago, Sahota found himself in the midst of a “business intelligence” investment boom, eventually brought on to IBM’s secret team behind its Jeopardy!-playing AI, Watson. He’s a founder of the UN’s AI for Good initiative, observing the rise of global AI tools and accompanying concerns in real time, even shepherding them on. And for almost a decade, Sahota has been on call with the international body as it devised a “tactical” response to AI.
“It was a bit of a brave …