Ten Commandments for KI

When the Parliamentary Industry Committee formulated “The Ten Commandments of Oil” in 1971, it gave Norway a political direction for a highly profitable resource. The result was that oil not only built an industry, but provided increased wealth and welfare for an entire nation.

Today we are facing a new resource and a new force: data and artificial intelligence (AI). Neither data nor KI are location-bound natural resources, but they have in common with oil that they are capital-intensive and can create enormous value.

The development of KI is explosive. The most advanced models roughly double capacity and performance every seven months. This opens up significant increases in productivity and improvement in service offerings. KI will become the infrastructure on which almost all important decisions will be built. Technology will change our working life, our leisure time and society at large.

Today, a small number of global players are driving AI development, primarily in the United States and China. These environments control not only the technology, but also the infrastructure, data and standards that the rest of the world has to deal with.

It makes us vulnerable.

Norway cannot compete on volume or capital, but we can find strength in our peculiarities: high digital maturity, reliable data management, high confidence in the population and access to affordable, renewable energy. By exploiting these characteristics, Norway can become a pioneer for steerable, trust-based IT, as we have been in the past for energy and digital management.

We must therefore ensure that technology is used on our terms and that the values created benefit everyone. Although there are many possibilities, there are also comprehensive risk picture. We mean, similar to a statement signed by over 300 leading scientists and politicians, that KI has an “enormous potential to advance human welfare, but that its current trajectory of development [also] involves unprecedented dangers”.

That's why we need principles -- or commandments -- that give direction to politicians, just as oil bids gave direction to oil policy. This is especially important when technology is developing faster than regulations and institutions.

In the spring, therefore, the think tank Long term lowered a selection for KI, with 15 experts from research, business, management and civil society. The committee has chiselled out ten commandments that will help ensure that AI and data benefit the whole society.

The proposals are broad, because KI is not just a business or digitalisation policy. There is also foreign policy, security and contingency policy, and welfare and benefits policy.

The Ten Commandments are:

1. KI and data will strengthen the Norwegian social model. Norway needs to adapt welfare schemes, taxes and ownership structures so that the gains from transformative KI are widely shared.
2. Norway will have an active foreign policy at KI. This will ensure that Norwegian interests, values and obligations are taken into account.
3. Effective management should create safety and confidence in KI. Authorities need to guide rather than control.
4. The state shall provide a secure, efficient and sustainable physical foundation for KI and data. Power, grids and data centres must be planned in line with national security.
5. Data should be used for knowledge development and value creation. The state needs to invest more in the collection, management and sharing of priority data sets from both public and private enterprises.
6. Public bodies shall manage safe and reliable AI models for the whole society. Open models trained on Norwegian data should be available to everyone.
7. Norway will have leading international academic communities in the field of ICT. It calls for increased investment in research and higher education.
8. The state is supposed to facilitate a competitive KI-driven business community. The private sector needs good framework conditions and access to capital, and foreign investment must contribute to value creation also nationally.
9. KI is supposed to make public services better and more efficient. Innovative and responsible use of AI and data is necessary to ensure a sustainable welfare state.
10. KI should give people meaning and mastery in work and leisure. Technology must put man at the center, and be used in a way that safeguards human judgment, autonomy and health.

Norway succeeded in managing oil for the good of the community by combining realism and ambition, building expertise and institutions, and thinking long-term. We must now do the same with data and AI if this too is to benefit the whole society.