By Sonny Aragba-Akpore
Most people who are information technology (IT) savvy have some understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI) but beyond textbook knowledge,not many of them truly understand its domestic and autonomous capabilities.
AI is capable of doing virtually everything possible for humanity including possibly how to make babies,so we are told.
When sometime ago,AI was used to conduct a full church service on a Sunday in Europe,it was a marvel.But AI has gone beyond that.
The International Telecommunications Union ( ITU) is thinking outside the box as it prepares ground for autonomous AI by formulation of policies and ground rules.
And these ensure a new wave of autonomous AI—capable of reasoning, acting independently, and scaling at unprecedented speed,rapidly reshaping the technological landscape.
The rise of “agentic AI” and powerful, low-cost AI models is making artificial intelligence cheaper, more widely available, and potentially more energy efficient—but also harder to regulate.
With some prominent CEOs predicting human-level AI within two to three years, concerns are mounting over safety risks, weakened guardrails, and the challenge of responsible governance.
These pressing issues will be the focus of the AI for Good Global Summit 2025, the United Nations’ leading platform advancing AI in service of sustainable development, in Geneva, Switzerland from July 8–11,2025.
The expanded, four-day gathering will also showcase progress on advanced robotics, autonomous mobility, quantum computing, AI in space, and brain-computer interfaces.
Hosted by the ITU,the UN agency for digital technologies, the goal of AI for Good is to identify trustworthy applications of AI, build AI skills and standards, and strengthen global dialogue on AI governance for sustainable development.
“As AI development accelerates, so does the urgency to keep innovation aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals,” said ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin. “AI for Good is where the world comes together to ensure these technologies are safe, responsible, and leave no one behind.”
At the AI for Good Global Summit 2025, leading experts from governments, industry, academia, civil society, and the UN will explore how AI is reshaping our world, tackling urgent challenges such as safety, employment, sustainability, privacy, security, governance, and its broader societal and economic impacts.
Among the AI visionaries set to present are Geoffrey Hinton, AI pioneer and Nobel Prize winner; Yoshua Bengio, Founder and Scientific Director of Mila – Quebec AI Institute and Turing Award winner; Sasha Luccioni, AI & Climate Lead of open-source AI developer Hugging Face; and other prominent voices.
Responding to the Global Digital Compact, adopted in 2024 by the UN General Assembly, the AI for Good Global Summit 2025 will provide a global platform for dialogue to advance AI governance, standards, and capacity building. As AI adoption accelerates, the Summit aims to inform policies and drive solutions that ensure AI is developed and deployed responsibly, fairly, and for the benefit of all.
Yet, a global AI governance gap persists—an ITU survey found that 55 per cent of Member States lack a national AI strategy, and 85 per cent have no AI-specific regulations.
To address this, the Summit will host ITU’s second AI Governance Day on July 10,focusing on safety, trust, international standards, and bridging the regulatory gap, while also tackling the urgent need to build AI skills and capacity, especially in developing countries.
On July 11 ,2025 the Summit will host an International AI Standards Exchange, bringing together leading global standards bodies to strengthen AI’s technical backbone, ensuring interoperability, safety, and inclusive standards development.
“ITU is driving the development of a trusted and interoperable AI ecosystem,” said Seizo Onoe, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau.
“Our AI standards are supporting innovation in areas from network orchestration and energy efficiency to multimedia coding and content authenticity. Our International AI Standards Exchange will help keep up global momentum on the technical underpinnings of responsible AI.”
The newly established AI for Good Awards, presented in partnership with Tech To The Rescue, will recognize groundbreaking AI solutions that contribute to global progress on sustainable development with categories including AI for People, AI for Planet, and AI for Prosperity. Applications for awards will open soon.
The AI for Good Global Summit is organized by ITU together with 47 partner UN agencies. The yearly event, co-convened by the Government of Switzerland, is free of charge and open to everyone.
This year, AI for Good makes its debut at Palexpo, Geneva’s largest event venue and exposition centre.
Apart from the ITU which has put in place some ground rules in the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning(ML),with International Standard Organisation (ISO),there are ongoing advocacies for entrenchment of ethics to minimise abuse of the use of AI across global communities.
AI ethics are the moral principles that companies and individuals use to guide responsible and fair development and use of AI.
Although there’s currently no wide-scale governing body to write and enforce these rules, many technology companies have adopted their own version of AI ethics or an AI code of conduct.
AI ethics are the set of guiding principles that stakeholders (from engineers to government officials) use to ensure artificial intelligence technology is developed and used responsibly. This means taking a safe, secure, humane, and environmentally friendly approach to AI.
A strong AI code of ethics can include avoiding bias, ensuring privacy of users and their data, and mitigating environmental risks. Codes of ethics in companies and government-led regulatory frameworks are two main ways that AI ethics can be implemented. By covering global and national ethical AI issues, and laying the policy groundwork for ethical AI in companies, both approaches help regulate AI technology.
The future will see large parts of our lives influenced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. Machines can execute repetitive tasks with complete precision, and with recent advances in AI, machines are gaining the ability to learn, improve and make calculated decisions in ways that will enable them to perform tasks previously thought to rely on human experience, creativity, and ingenuity.
AI innovation will be central to the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by capitalizing on the unprecedented quantities of data now being generated on sentiment behavior, human health, commerce, communications, migration and more.
ITU will provide a neutral platform for government, industry and academia to build a common understanding of the capabilities of emerging AI technologies and consequent needs for technical standardization and policy guidance.
Countries must put in conscious efforts to mitigate the dangers of deployment if they want to achieve positive results.
Speaking during a digital press briefing on the review of the: “Global Inclusivity and AI-Africa Conference” as well as its responsible use, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of African Affairs, Joy Basu, stated that while it was great to grab the opportunities provided by the use of AI, the world must also learn to reduce its negative impact.
“Many of us know the risks that are both applicable in Africa but also in the United States.
There’s a lot of humility we have about understanding that none of us can control these risks alone and that it will really be a global conversation.
“You also have a number of risks particularly around elections. This is a year where so many countries are voting, including our own, and we all have to be aware of those risks.
“Regardless of the ways in which the risks manifest, one key mitigating solution that was discussed is ensuring that our populations are AI-equipped and are AI-ready and that they have not only the skills to take advantage of an AI workforce, but they have the critical thinking skills to be able to assess truth from fiction and disinformation and understand what those risks are and the way that they interact with AI,” Basu said.
She added that there was also a robust conversation throughout the conference about these various concerns as well as about the lack of certain kinds of data and languages and making sure these AI models are built in ways that are inclusive.
When the ITU hosted the yearly Global Seminar for Regulators(GSR),in Kampala,Uganda,in early in July 2024,Secretary General, Bogdan-Martin told the regulators that “With change being the only certainty facing regulators and policymakers, we must work together to pursue regulatory approaches to leverage transformative technologies such as AI, promote the space economy, encourage innovation, and support climate action and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.”
The regulators who met in Kampala,Uganda endorsed a set of guidelines to maximize the benefits of transformative information and communication technologies (ICTs) at the Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR-24) which closed July 4 .
GSR 24 highlighted Africa’s National Broadband Mapping Systems project, supported by the European Commission, to help establish broadband mapping systems to foster investment and digital transformation in Africa.
With a budget of EUR 15 million over four years, the project will initially benefit 11 countries: Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The “GSR-24 Best Practice Guidelines” agreed by ICT regulators include a series of considerations for balancing innovation with regulation to create a positive impact on societies and economies from emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).