BRICS Media and Think Tank Forum calls for greater Global South role in shaping global AI governance

At the seventh plenary session of the BRICS Media and Think Tank Forum (earlier known as the ‘BRICS Media Forum’), more than 250 representatives from media organisations, think tanks, government agencies and enterprises from 36 countries gathered in Rio de Janeiro to deliberate on ways to foster greater South-South co-operation, including on joint R&D and co-established standards, for a more equitable sharing of Artificial Intelligence (AI) benefits across nations.

A major concern that emerged was the risks of AI capabilities being concentrated among a few actors located in a handful of countries, with several participants noting that it could create dangerous dependencies for Global South nations.

The Forum, organised on July 15-17, highlighted the importance of open source development of AI as well as the need for Global South nations to work together for a greater say in the shaping of AI governance frameworks. Mr Thorsten Jelinek, Europe Director and Senior Fellow of Taihe Institute, pointed out that some amount of “regulatory autonomy” is critical to maintain the balance between multilateralism and sovereignty. “The history of modern technology, whether it is telecommunications or the internet, has been shaped not only by innovation but also by technological, economic and institutional hierarchies and dependencies,” he noted, adding that the right governance framework would encourage AI as “a moral partner” to growth and development.

The Forum’s lead statement on AI also called on media organisations and think tanks in the Global South to develop a “multilingual and multimodal corpus”. This would “lay the foundation for training large-scale AI models that serve journalism and think tank research.” By “leveraging AI to translate quality content into multiple languages,” it will become possible to increase “the availability of ‘Global South Stories’, elevate the international voice and influence of the Global South” and showcase the diversity of Global South civilisations, it said.

Mr. Fu Hua, Executive Chairman of the Forum and president of Xinhua News Agency, observed that BRICS was becoming the “main channel for fostering Global South unity and self-reliance”. Noting that the BRICS countries represent vast civilisational diversity and pluralism, he urged BRICS media organisations and think tanks to prioritise and amplify stories from different parts of the Global South as a necessary corrective to the prevailing hegemonies and biases in the international media landscape.

Speaking in the context of the US threat to impose additional punitive tariffs on countries wanting to join BRICS, Mr. Wu Hailong, President of the China Public Diplomacy Association, emphasised that the BRICS grouping was not in opposition to any country but a mechanism “to seek equity and justice” in the international governance scenario. “Given that the world seems to be going back to the jungle rule of tariff turbulence, BRICS nations must co-operate more to protect their interests and oppose unilateralism,” he said.

“The U.S. is our biggest trade partner, we have a free trade agreement with them, nearly 40 million Mexicans live in the U.S., and despite all this, we are living with daily threats of tariffs, and millions of Mexicans in the US could lose their citizenship any day,” said Ms. Yeidckol Polevnsky Gurwitz, Chair of the Asia-Pacific Foreign Relations Committee of the Mexican Senate, adding, “The world cannot organise itself around unilateralism and inequity, it needs to be built around co-operation and multilateralism.”

Organised by Xinhua News Agency in collaboration with partners from BRICS nations, the Forum officially launched the ‘Global South Joint Communication Partnership Program’, an initiative by Xinhua to promote dialogue and cooperation across various sectors within the Global South. So far, 700 institutions have joined the Partnership Program, which leverages two core platforms – the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum and the Global South Media News Network.

The Forum also launched a new report by Xinhua, titled ‘The Rise of the Global South’, a compilation that showcases stories of political and economic resurgence in post-colonial societies across Asia, Africa and Latin America.