Event 14 August 2023

Tackling challenges of AI: The Collective Impact Coalition for digital inclusion

Advancing responsible and ethical artificial intelligence

Thursday, 14 September 2023 – 08:30 EDT / 14:30 CEST/ 15:30 EAT

Tackling challenges of AI: The Collective Impact Coalition for Digital Inclusion

The World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) launched the Collective Impact

Coalitions (CICs) in 2021 to provide a space for Allies and stakeholders to take forward cross-sector, collaborative action based on data and evidence provided by WBA benchmarks.

These CICs are multi-stakeholder and timebound, bringing together diverse actors from large institutional investors to civil society, academia and business platforms to coordinate and collaborate on actions to drive positive changes on systematically important topics. These CICs are key to ensuring corporate accountability on sustainable development.

From 2022, the Collective Impact Coalition for Digital Inclusion has been focusing on driving measurable progress on corporate commitment to ethical Artificial Intelligence (AI) principles, especially among the 130 digital technology companies who were found to be lacking such a commitment. In doing so, the Coalition encourages a positive change in industry business practices, enhancing business responsibility for an inclusive and trustworthy digital transformation.

Investor participants in the Digital CIC have already kicked off a collaborative engagement to drive adoption of ethical AI principles among the companies in their portfolio, see here the Investor Statement on Ethical AI. The civil society group of the Digital CIC has been involved in awareness creation events on the topic and have also published a joint statement calling on the tech companies to commit to responsible development and application of AI, guided by ethics, respect for human rights and the principle of leaving no one behind.

There will be more CIC actions happening going forward, including holding awareness creation events, online campaigns among other joint activities.

Launch of the Digital CIC Progress Report

This roundtable at the side-lines of the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) aims to launch the Digital CIC progress report, detailing the impact of stakeholder engagements with tech companies on the need to adopt ethical AI principles. The discussion will feature global multi-stakeholders to discuss how they can leverage common interests in addressing the lack of commitment to ethical AI principles by most digital technology companies, as highlighted in WBA’s 2023 Digital Inclusion Benchmark results.

Keynote speaker:

Tara Denham, Director General for Human Rights, Freedoms and Inclusion at Global Affairs Canada

Moderator:

Lauren Compere, Managing Director and Head of Stewardship and Engagement at Boston Common Asset Management

Lead Discussants

Jan Rydzak, Digital Sector Transformation Lead at the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA
Caitlin Kraft-Buchman, CEO/Founder Women at the Table
Thobekile Matimbe, Senior Manager, Partnerships and Engagements at Paradigm Initiative
Patrick Shortt, Sustainable Investing Graduate Associate, Fidelity International
Benjamin Chekroun, Engagement Specialist, CANDRIAM

Please reach out to Nicholas Sewe, Engagement Manager, Digital Inclusion Benchmark ( n.sewe@worldbenchmarkingalliance.org ) in case you have any questions.