Unesco Launches Instrument for Assessment of a Country’s AI Readiness

On Monday (27/5), the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launched the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM) in Jakarta, Indonesia. RAM is an instrument to measure the readiness to use AI in a country. RAM can also guide an AI governance framework that is responsible and protects human rights.

“This tool was prepared by AI experts, AI policy experts, as well as AI governance experts from various countries who have assisted the UNESCO secretariat,” said Head of Social and Human Sciences Unit at UNESCO Jakarta, Irakli Khodeli, at the discussion event “AI Readiness Assessment Methodology” in Jakarta.

Irakli continued to explain that the assessment instrument developed by UNESCO includes five dimensions, namely legal, social/cultural, science, economics, and technology/infrastructure. For example, in the legal dimension, the instrument will check whether a country has policies regarding AI and policies related to the protection and confidentiality of personal data, as well as the country’s cybersecurity index score.

“This tool is qualitative and quantitative. There are many analytical questions to assess a country’s readiness. For a qualitative example, does your country have a personal data protection law? If not, is a law being prepared? “Then, there is also an assessment of how effective the law is in providing protection and control over your data,” explained Irakli.

Before the advent of RAM, there were several indices to assess a country’s readiness to utilize AI, including the Government AI Readiness Index by Oxford Insights, the Global Cities AI Readiness Index by Oliver Wyman Forum, and the AI Readiness Benchmark by Capgemini Consulting. However, the majority of these indices do not include the socio-cultural dimensions and legal framework of a country.

With the launch of RAM, UNESCO is encouraging the Ministry of Communication and Information (Kominfo) to evaluate readiness for the use of AI in Indonesia. UNESCO has also published Recommendations on the Ethics of Using AI, which it is hoped will serve as a guiding reference for Kominfo in regulating and supervising the governance and practices of using AI in Indonesia.

Regarding this, Hario Bismo Kuntarto, representative of the Directorate of Applications and Technology at Kominfo, said that Kominfo will formulate an AI governance policy that takes into account RAM and UNESCO’s Ethical Recommendations for the Use of AI. The aim of AI regulation by Kominfo is so that technological innovation can continue, but potential risks can be mitigated and prevented in the public interest.

“Indeed, we initially started from a technology perspective, but AI is multisectoral in nature. This year, we will try to formulate policy recommendations. “Hopefully, with the presence of RAM, we can provide clearer things that we can do to ensure that the Kominfo circular can be further enforced,” concluded Hario in the same discussion. []