According to media reports, the G7 summit echoed the discussions of regulations for artificial intelligence (AI). Attending the event, Joe Biden, the president of the United States also presented his views on a crypto regulation as proposed by some lawmakers in his country.
The Group of Seven (G7) is a grouping of seven major industrialized democracies and advanced economies of the world, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union (EU).
According to the joint statement released after the meeting, the G7 has decided to work towards the adoption of interoperable regulatory and technical standards for AI. They discussed in length the importance of international discussions on AI governance, noting the need for interoperability between AI governance frameworks.
The nations highlighted concerns around the rapid growth and accessibility of generative AI models like ChatGPT. The member nations suggested “the need to immediately take stock of the opportunities and challenges of generative AI, which is increasingly prominent across countries and sectors.”
While individually all the nations have different stances on AI, the statement said that they shared a “common vision and goal of trustworthy AI.” As well as committing to work on shared technical standards, they agreed that relevant ministers would set up an AI working group by the end of this year. Reportedly, the group will discuss how to prioritize intellectual property rights, promote transparency, and protect against the spreading of wrong information.
Notably, the latest step from the group follows the news that the EU, which is counted as one of the members of the group, has moved one step closer to passing dedicated AI regulations. Earlier this month, the EU Parliament adopted a draft negotiating mandate for the AI Bill. The bill which is currently developing seeks to expand citizens’ rights to contest decisions made by AI and demand transparency of AI systems and also ban certain applications of AI.
While AI became one of the biggest highlights at the meeting, the US president also commented on budget negotiations. He stated that the spending proposal between the Republican Party through a bipartisan proposal had not been confirmed. He also called the Republican proposal “simply unacceptable” and said that:
I’m not going to agree to a deal that protects wealthy tax cheats and crypto traders while putting food assistants at risk.
The alleged protections for crypto traders refer to tax-loss harvesting. Crypto tax-loss harvesting is a strategy that investors use to reduce their overall tax liabilities. It involves selling a cryptocurrency at a loss to offset capital gains from crypto profit.
Along with ending tax-loss harvesting for crypto, the White House pitched Republicans a similar proposal that bars investors from deferring taxes on real estate swaps. Both the changes would add about $40 billion in tax revenue for the U.S. government.
However, currently, no bipartisan agreement has been confirmed in the US. Reportedly, President Biden headed back to the United States on Sunday to continue budget negotiations. However, it appears evident that he has no plans to outline any spending benefits that protect or benefit the crypto sector.
Notably, the G7 had previously prioritized crypto regulation at the top of the table but with the recent rapid advancements in AI, the leaders had to take over discussions surrounding AI. Following the success of ChatGPT, tech giants including Microsoft, Google, etc announced their AI projects. In fact, Meta, which had been obsessed with the metaverse for a long time, also showed increasing interest in AI.