ITU Press conference: ITU’s 2024 priorities

Good afternoon and welcome to this press conference with ITU Secretary General Doreen Bogdan Martin.

Secretary General Bogdan Martin is the first woman to lead ITU and it's nearly 160 year history.

She also does so at a time that ITU is leading on all things digital in radio communication and standardisation in development.

Things that sound technical but yet touch on our everyday lives in the form of advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, space and satellites, and the complex but important challenge of connecting the 2.6 billion people around the world who are not online.

Secretary General has about 30 minutes with us today, so I'll move it quickly to questions.

I'll ask reporters to keep questions please, if you can, to one question at first at a time with a, with a connected follow up if it's if there is one.

We'll recognise questions here on the floor first and then go to our colleagues who are joining remotely.

And importantly, we ask you if you can, please, to identify your name and your outlet when asking questions.

OK, with that, I'll hand it over to the Secretary General.

Madam Secretary General.

Thank you.

Thank you, David and good afternoon.

Good afternoon to our our colleagues here in Geneva and to those that are are joining us remotely.

I had heard about this, this new press room, but it is quite stunning.

It's beautiful.

It's wonderful to have this opportunity to be able to share with you this afternoon the work of the ITU and help the public to better understand the work that we do in what I would call a defining a time in terms a defining moment, I should say in terms of of technology.

I think the the best way to describe ITU is really to think about what makes global communications possible.

And I'm talking about radio spectrum, about satellites, about standards, technology development policies, and all of the things that we need to be able to make our digital lives possible.

So the ITU is the UN agency that's behind all of this.

And we've been around for a pretty long time, since 1865, from the Telegraph to the telephone, the television to the Internet, and of course now artificial intelligence.

We work on all the technologies that are actually transforming our world today, from AI to the metaverse to quantum computing.

We we tackle all of these big topics from cybersecurity to sustainability.

And of course connectivity is really at the core of all of our work.

We have 193 member states.

They've given us a very strong mandate at our last, what we call Plenty Potentiary Conference, where I was elected.

We have these two big strategic goals.

The 1st is universal connectivity and the second is sustainable digital transformation.

Those goals are ambitious and those goals are bold, but we're firmly committed and dedicated to delivering on those goals.

So I actually took office 14 months ago and I've been very busy.

But as I said, those those two goals of universal connectivity and sustainable digital transformation have been my number one priority.

And what I've seen since my time in in office is I've seen women who can't afford a smartphone, women in countries where entry level handsets can exceed 70 percent, 70% of average household monthly incomes.

And I think it's appropriate to mention that as tomorrow is International Women's Day.

So sticking with that theme, I'll mention something else.

Women still account for a disproportionate and growing share of the global offline population, outnumbering men by some 20%.

In least developed countries, only 30% of women have access to the Internet.

I've met with refugees, I've met with migrants, with displaced persons who rely on this connectivity for their education, for their healthcare and for their livelihoods.

And I've experienced in my time as ITU Secretary General 2 worlds.

I would say one in **** income countries where almost 90% of the population is covered by a 5G network and a much bigger and also poorer world where service is nearly absent and when available, it's not affordable.

I think the bottom line is that 2.6 billion people today are not connected.

They've never, ever connected to the Internet.

And this is really one of the biggest challenges of our generation.

And it comes at a time of both hope and also uncertainty.

Uncertainty because emerging technologies like artificial intelligence can be used to erode trust in our elections, in our institutions, and it can threaten our jobs, our privacy, and I think also our very future.

It's also a world where we feel less safe with more than 2200 cyberattacks each day.

But I think there's also a lot of hope in this world.

And I recently came back from Mobile World Congress, which was held in Barcelona last week.

And I had the great honour of announcing 9 billion U.S.

dollars in commitments for accessible and affordable network connectivity through our partner to Connect Digital Coalition.

And I think that that new commitment, in addition to previous commitments, it gets us to 46 billion.

Our target is 100, but I think that that new commitment really sends a message of hope to millions of people that are in need.

And the hope takes takes different forms.

The same technologies that can harm us can also help us solve some of the world's most pressing challenges.

AI can help mitigate 10% of greenhouse gas emissions by 20-30.

I think that's quite exciting.

The SDG Digital Acceleration Agenda that we launched a couple of months ago together with our partner UNDP, actually shows that digital solutions like artificial intelligence can help to boost progress on things like climate change, on education, poverty, healthcare, and frankly all of the UN17 Sustainable Development Goals.

And I think that's why digital is such an important part of the conversations that are taking place right here in Geneva, from the Human Rights Council to discussions right now happening at ILO in WHO and WIPO.

I won't name them all, but pretty much every organisation here in Geneva and elsewhere is focusing on digital.

Digital is also going to be front and centre in the upcoming UN conference on Small Island developing states on the Landlocked Developing Country Summit that will that will follow that.

And from the UN to the World Economic Forum to the G7 to the G20, I think it's fair to say that digital is not just on top of the agenda, but digital is the agenda.

And I think this moment was made for ITU and the next few months are going to be critical.

In 199 days to be precise, the UN summit of the future will kick off.

We also have the the AI for Good Global Summit that the ITU will be hosting in in May.

We have our World Summit on the Information Society Plus 20 review.

And of course the ITU has its World Telecommunications Standardisation Assembly that also happens in November.

I think in our 160 year history we've learned something very important and that is that great innovation opportunities often come with equally formidable challenges.

And whether it's ensuring that that no one is left behind, or it's actually tackling climate change, which is a critical topic every day, to harnessing space as an engine of sustainable development, or striking a balance between innovation and regulation when it comes to emerging technologies, ITU stands ready to address these pressing issues head on.

Working with partners, working with our multi stakeholder membership and I think with that David, I will, I'll pause and look forward to your comments and questions.

Thank you.

And I'll take my spokesperson's badge away if I if I don't say more questions and comments, please, in the limited time that we have today.

Thank you, Secretary General, for that compelling case for technology in our lives and for understanding, for explaining.

I choose role in all that.

So open the floor to questions please, if I can.

If you can, please state your name and outlook please.

Yes, thank you for.

Taking my question.

And thank you for this briefing, Yuri Opera from Rhea Novosti, the Russian agency.

I have two.

Questions.

The first one is about the.

International artificial intelligence.

You talked about it.

Here we have regularly.

We here for example.

Volcker, Chirk, or others.

Representative of the UN saying that they are dangerous, they can be dangerous.

Not that.

They are, but they can.

Do you think that it is the case that we have to?

Be careful with them and what can we do?

In order to protect.

Ourself about that.

And my second, thank you, Fletch.

Can we start with one question first?

We'll get to everybody and then take a thank you, Secretary General.

Well, thank you.

Thank you very much for for the question.

And of course here in Geneva we hear, oops, we hear from, from, from Volcker and and frankly probably all of all of the, the UN agencies.

I know ILO will be talking about this this next week.

From our perspective, we've been looking at artificial intelligence for a number of years.

And I think it's important to remember AI is not new.

What's new and I think making headlines is generative AI.

And probably if we were having this conversation this time last year, we might talk about it a little.

But today it's everywhere.

And, and I think it's for good reason because there are incredible opportunities that we can, we, we can leverage from AI in general, from generative AI, but there are risks and we need to be able to manage and mitigate the risks.

It's a challenge to find how to balance between regulating and stifling innovation.

And that's the current debate that we're seeing, not just here in Geneva, but I think globally.

As you know, I mentioned the summit of the futures will have this global digital compact.

The Secretary General has constituted the **** level advisory body on artificial intelligence who they will be here next week and maybe you'll have an opportunity to engage with them and they're looking at exactly these issues and trying to make some recommendations about future, future governance models.

In the context, as I mentioned of of our work and our AI for good summit in particular, we are very focused on the good, but we are very aware that we need to manage the risks and the bad.

We're focused on issues around transparency, around predictability, around safety, privacy, data.

The ethical dimensions of course are are critical.

And when we gather at the end of May this year for our summit, we have a specific day on the 29th of May, which is called the AI Governance Day.

We'll be gathering here in Geneva all of the different initiatives that are happening from what's happening in the EU to the United States to what's happening in China, the G7, the G20.

And we will bring those initiatives together to have some discussion and see if we can find ways to move this debate forward together with, as I said, the UN Secretary General's H Lab.

Thank you, secretary, and also go to a couple of of questions that we have lined up here in the floor.

Jamie, please, I'm sorry.

No problem.

Thank you, Madam.

Baga Martin, I'm Jamie from Associated Press.

I wanted to ask you about what ITU is doing and can do in the future to mitigate the risks of cyber attacks and other nefarious activities online that could jeopardise a number of national elections that are occurring around the world this year in the United States and many other places.

What are you doing and what can ITU do to help reduce those risks?

Yeah, thank you.

That's that's a great question.

And indeed many countries will be voting this year.

I think some 2 billion people will go to to the ballot boxes this year.

And cybersecurity and misinformation, disinformation are are front and centre and being discussed in in, in different FORA.

And we are also paying close attention to the UN Secretary General's policy brief on information integrity, which I think gives a good framing to the issue.

So the ITU, as some of you in this room know well, and I'm looking to my colleague in the in the front row, we've been engaged in cybersecurity issues for many, many years.

Going back to the World Summit on the Information Society 2003, 2005, which gave the ITU specific mandate to look at building confidence and security when it comes to information and communication systems and technologies.

Back in 2010, we launched the Global Cybersecurity Agenda and we started to support countries first when it came to child Online Protection, that was the first focus and we've developed since then and it's still very strong.

Our, our child Online Protection partnership, the guidelines and the trainings that we do very focused on children, but we also work directly with our member States to help them develop policies and strategies.

Now our our data show us that well over 100 countries actually have policies and strategies, which wasn't the case before.

That's usually the first step when a country begins to develop their cyber capacity.

We're also helping countries could put in place certs, which is another critical component.

And we do quite a lot of training capacity development.

I think we did some 8080 or so cyber drills where we're working with countries directly doing simulations, trying to make sure that they have the necessary skills to prevent in the first case and to be able to respond should an attack happen.

But I think as I mentioned, attacks are happening every day and it's up kind of I think it's 80% year on year.

And so it is an area of growing concern and we are ramping up our support to countries in that domain.

Thank you.

Catherine Fionncon Boconga for Frozen Cat.

I'd like to.

Come back to your.

Opening remarks regarding the access.

To mobile the phone.

As you mentioned.

The cost is.

Quite **** for the biggest parts of the world and I'd like to know.

If you found some.

Solutions during the meeting in Barcelona, maybe with companies, Indian companies.

Or Chinese companies to.

Get cheap mobile phones.

What are the solutions to to bring?

These.

2 billion and people in in in the.

World of communication.

Thank you.

That's, that's a great question and very much the focus of our efforts because when we target that issue, that's how we're going to get the unconnected connected.

So the big issue certainly around around cost, it's around the cost of the device, but also the cost around the service.

So it's sort of twofold, but I'll come back to you in a second.

But I just wanted to also add, when it comes to connecting the unconnected, what we've understood is it's not just the connection and the device.

There are also other factors that have to be addressed if we're going to make that connectivity meaningful.

So we place a lot of emphasis and work with different partners on digital skill building, which is key.

We also place a lot of emphasis on multilingualism, making sure that the content is available.

In local language, languages that the content is actually relevant.

And then also coming back to the previous question that we build in kind of cyber hygiene cybersecurity practises as well, because with the increase in cybersecurity challenges, it's actually keeping people offline, especially women who are more subject to online harassment and bullying.

What's really exciting about the affordability issues linked to the devices is that there's a lot happening.

I think our industry has recognised that if they don't bring down the handset cost that it's just they're they're not going to be able to get people connected.

I was recently in Rwanda where they have launched a smartphone.

I think it's around 13 or $14.00.

And then the package, I think it's a dollar a month and it's a pretty big amount of data that you have access to, might even be unlimited during that month.

And it's a partnership that they've done with with Airtel and others.

And we're seeing that same kind of sort of experimentation happen in other neighbouring African countries.

MTN has a programme, Safari COM has a programme and it, it's, it's working.

We're seeing it, it start to to take off and they have a pretty long list of, of users waiting to be part of those programmes.

You mentioned India.

We saw this very clearly in the context of their presidency of the G20, the efforts that they're making also to bring down the cost of the handset.

And another factor to keep in mind is we do have many countries over 100 that have universal service funds.

And in many cases, those universal service funds have been used and are being used to subsidise and offset the cost of smartphones.

And all of that being said, I think it's important to remember that feature phones still have value.

And so we shouldn't exclude feature phones when we look at at at benefits that connectivity can bring.

So it's not just a smartphone.

A feature phone can still have at least some value.

Thank you.

We have a couple of questions online on the floor.

Christophe, I I thought I saw your hand raised earlier.

I don't know if you have a question still.

John, please.

Yeah, good.

Yes, Secretary General, I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit on the 2200 cyberattacks daily.

Has the ITU got any interesting data on the impact this is having on e-commerce and identity theft on a daily basis?

Secondly, the attacks on critical infrastructure, especially on healthcare as we saw in the past week in the US.

And thirdly, many of the ITU member states are also spending because we have some people online too.

We'll get to the TO if you want to take one of those two questions, please, Secretary General.

Thank you.

Good question.

So I mean, our, our, our research indicates as I said that that attacks are increasing by some 80% year on year and daily numbers obviously go up and down.

And we are all, I think it's fair to say more concerned now more than ever when we see these increases in, in, in attacks.

And whether it's healthcare institution or establishment or financial institutions or, or government attacks, I think every attack needs to be taken seriously and we need to find ways to, to address it.

I mean, I think I heard at the end of that question the submarine cable issue and maybe I'll, I'll just jump right into that because that that is in the headlines.

And I think we're seeing more and more concerns about submarine cables.

And of course, what's important to remember is that submarine cables are a fundamental piece of our global communication system carrying voice data, etcetera.

I what's also important to note is that we have some, I think it's close to 500 cables and unfortunately outages happen probably 100 or so or what the, the, the data tells us.

And it's not always clear what causes those outages.

The current outage in the Red Sea I know is is being discussed and investigations are still ongoing.

I just wanted to add what the ITU does in that context, and this is linked to our universal connectivity work.

Our standards work is we focus on the resilience angle.

We have a lot of discussions happening in the standardisation study groups that are looking at the resilience angle.

How can we build better resilience and also looking at it from the smart cable angle, which is quite an important work agenda in the context of our standardisation work.

Thank you.

We'll go now to a couple of questions that we have online.

We have a couple of minutes left with the Secretary General.

I'll turn it over first to Antonio from FA.

Thank you very much.

My question is about regulation of artificial intelligence.

What is, in your opinion, the main questions that have to be taken into account for this regulation?

And do you think that ITU should be the leading regulator of this technology?

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So as I mentioned, we've been engaged on these topics for a number of years.

And when it comes to specific work topics, we started to approach this through a standards lens, looking at artificial intelligence in different groups that we have.

We call them focus groups.

We've been addressing AI in healthcare, autonomous driving, in disaster management, in agriculture and looking at it from a standards angle and working with a number of UN partners who is a big partner in, in our AI for health group together with WIPO.

And they've done some important contributions in four different topic areas.

And they call it through an open, open code effort.

I think when it comes to to AI, we have to be focusing on the transparency issues, the accountability issues, as I mentioned, as I mentioned before, the safety dimensions, security ethics, the data piece, the algorithms.

Again, I have to say this cause tomorrow's International Women's Day, there's a huge bias when it comes to the data sets.

There were some I think 130 plus systems that were analysed, AI systems and they found that there were, I think it was 40 something percent had a significant gender bias.

So that's kind of concerning.

When it comes to regulating, again, we have to be careful not to over regulate and stifle innovation.

We have to find that balance and ITU is doing its part in that.

We gather we're the only institution that gathers the world's digital regulators, the the the world's ICT regulators.

We have our global symposium for regulators coming up in July in Uganda.

We will have a big focus on AI and we'll also have the focus on AI governance at our AI for Good summit.

But the the issues of who should govern and I often get the question which is what?

There are too many governance efforts happening.

I'm not sure that that's a bad thing.

For me, it means that there's an important focus on a topic that we need to be looking at clearly now, but what we need to be doing is learning from each other.

Where do we really need to be regulating?

Where can we let innovation take its course?

How can we look at at things on a more global level when it comes to watermarking and red teaming so that we are sure that when things get out there that they're actually safe?

This is a big part of the of the Secretary General's advisory body as AUN specialised agency, we Co chair AUN interagency group.

We have just made an important input to AUN committee.

It's also going to be shared with with the H lab.

And what's interesting is in this group of more than 40 agencies is that we have identified a significant number.

When I say significant is I think it's more than 50 of normative frameworks, regulations, guidelines that we can draw from international ones within our constituents that can help us as we try to navigate the the the pathway forward for AI.

I don't know that we're at time we have two questions are online AFP and I have UN brief my appliance online.

I don't know Secretary General if we took two very short questions beginning at to finish this up.

So then we'll go to Nina, first to you and then Maya.

Yes, hi.

Thank you for taking my question.

I was going to ask you about what your biggest fears are around the developments we're seeing in AI.

If what is basically keeping you up at night And on that issue, I wanted to come back on what you were saying on the bias because UNESCO had a report out today about the unequivocal evidence of prejudice against women within on all the most popular AI tools.

How do you counter that that algorithmic bias and actually sexism?

Thank you, thank you.

I think my biggest fear and what keeps me up at night is the 2.6 billion people that are not connected.

And I say that because if you're not part of the digital world, then you're not part of the AI world.

And I do think we have to, we have to close that gap and in parallel find ways to make AI safer.

So I'll, I'll, I'll stop on that point.

But in terms of the bias issue and UNESCO's launch, we have to remember that women are less connected, that women are less represented in this sector.

So I'm the first woman to lead ITU in almost 160 years.

I hope I'm not the last.

There are not enough women in STEM.

There are not enough women in AI.

There are not enough women in quantum, not enough women in space.

And I do think when it comes to to the data, the algorithms, we need to have more women at the table in STEM fields in general.

But in particular, as we look to the future of AI, we need to get more women in AI like now.

Thank you.

And we'll close out the list.

Maya plants you in brief.

Yes, thank you.

Very much for taking my question.

Secretary General, when you talk about the one.

100 billion needed.

To.

Bring.

2.6 billion people.

Online by 2026.

Can you give us a breakdown?

How did ITU arrived at this number?

Thank you for the question.

So the 100 billion that we're targeting by 2026 is a first step, but it does not close the digital divide.

Partner to Connect was constructed as a pledging platform, as a global pledging platform to encourage countries, companies, civil society, academic institutions to come forward and make a commitment to help connect the hardest to connect.

Its focus on the access piece, the adoption piece, the skill building piece, and also the value creation piece, which is being able to create applications and services so that people can actually leverage their participation in the digital economy.

But when it comes to overall numbers, we did a study called Connecting Humanity and our study showed that it would take over 428 billion to connect the unconnected.

And we're actually in the process of of revisiting that exercise to see how the calculations may have shifted because that work was done on the basis of just connecting.

And we know that just connecting is not enough.

So that's a work in progress.

And I would also say another piece of that work actually started in Africa, went together with the World Bank and the Broadband Commission.

We came up with an African moon shot that said if you wanted to close the gap in Africa, which has one of the biggest gaps when it comes to digital, we would need 100 billion.

And so building on that methodology, we came up with the connecting humanity construct and we will be going deeper to understand the numbers and where we need to be focusing, targeting our interventions and hopefully bringing the needed investment with it.

Madam Secretary, John, thank you for the time that you've given us.

Thank you for your questions, but we have gone over time, but we look forward to the next opportunity to be able to do this.

Thank you very much.