The United Nations and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) launched the AI for Good Global Commission on July 2, bringing together more than 40 heads of state, technology executives, and international organization leaders to tackle the uneven global spread of artificial intelligence.
Leadership and members
The commission is co-chaired by Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and Salesforce Chair and CEO Marc Benioff, with ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin as Vice-Chair.
Founding members include NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Microsoft President Brad Smith, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, and Google’s James Manyika. Heads of state from Estonia, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Namibia, Nigeria, Singapore, and Togo also joined, alongside leaders of UNDP, UNESCO, WIPO, the WTO, and telecoms companies including MTN Group, Vodafone, and Orange.
What the commission will do
Rather than operating as a regulatory body, the commission aims to “identify practical pathways to strengthen trust, support responsible innovation, and enhance human capability.” A central concern is digital inequality: roughly 2.2 billion people worldwide remain offline, leaving them excluded from AI’s economic and social benefits.
By connecting heads of government with the builders of frontier AI systems, the commission is designed to link policy decisions directly to the organizations deploying AI at scale.
President Kagame stated at the launch that “technology is supposed to be a force for good, and we have a responsibility to use it accordingly.”
First meeting
The commission will hold its inaugural session July 7 to 10 at the ITU AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, where governments, industry, and civil society are gathering to align on AI standards and deployment goals.