From April 18 to 20, 2018, the First Meeting of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 Artificial Intelligence Subcommittee(hereinafter referred to as SC 42) hosted by Standardization Administration of China and coordinated by China Electronics Standardization Institute, was hold successfully in Beijing. 17 member countries including China, Canada, Germany, France, India, Russia, Ireland, South Korea, Japan, Australia, United Kingdom, United States, and about 90 representatives of ISO, IEC, ISO/IEC JTC 1/JAG, IEEE and other international organizations attended the meeting.

The Chinese delegation was headed by Sun Wenlong, vice president of China Electronics Standardization Institute. The delegation consisted of 23 experts from China Electronics Standardization Institute, Shenzhen Tencent Computer Systems Co., Ltd, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd, Peking University, Renmin University of China, The Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beihang University, Beijing Sense Time Co., Ltd and IFLYTEC Co., Ltd. Associate Professor Guo Rui and researchers of Renmin University of China Law School and Renmin Law and Technology Institute ( RLTI, also known as the Future Rule of Law Institute ) attended the meeting as registered experts of International Organization for Standardization and members of the Chinese delegation.

At the meeting, entrusted by the head of the Chinese delegation, Associate Professor Guo Rui introduced the work on the social concerns and ethical issues of artificial intelligence in China’s artificial intelligence standardization. Associate Professor Guo Rui pointed out that China attached great importance to the social concerns of artificial intelligence. On January 18, 2018, the Standardization Administration of China promulgated the  Artificial Intelligence Standardization White Paper (2018) , which specifically addressed the issues of the safety, ethics and privacy issues of artificial intelligence. At present, Associate Professor Guo Rui was the team leader of the artificial intelligence social ethics research group, which organized experts from universities, research institutes and industry to research. He pointed out that the application of artificial intelligence technology was under a certain social environment. It had the potential to benefit the society or harm the society. Therefore, the study of the social impact and ethical issues of artificial intelligence was an indispensable part of the artificial intelligence standardization.

The Chinese delegation achieved a series of remarkable results at this meeting. The meeting formed the following important resolutions: JTC 1/SC 42 would suggest ISO/IEC JTC 1 to expedite ISO/TMB to agree that its scope of research covers social concerns such as AI autonomy, robots, harmlessness of industrial Internet of Things, AI eavesdropping, AI algorithm discrimination and other issues. The WG 1 basic working group would develop ISO/IEC AWI 22989 AI concepts and terms and ISO/IEC AWI 23053 would build two international standards of AI system framework based on machine learning.

(Editor: Han Ying)