Al Sur's report on ethics and personal data in Artificial Intelligence for the former ICDPPC was the only one made by civil society

The public consultation on "Ethics and Data Protection in Artificial Intelligence: continuation of the debate" promoted by the ICDPPC (International Conference of Commissioners of Data Protection and Privacy), current Global Privacy Assembly (GPA), was a new opportunity for the Perspectives from the Global South and, in particular, from Latin America, to be an active part of the vivid world debate on ethics and data protection in the context of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

For this reason, in 2019, Al Sur made a contribution to the GPA call, named "Ethics and data protection in artificial intelligence: continuation of the debate. A contribution from Latin America and the Caribbean" that can be consulted here in Spanish.

As the GPA stated in a report later in 2019, Al Sur's presentation was the only one made by civil society worldwide: "Not surprisingly, the responses were pre-dominated by commercial organisations or their trade associations. They are namely Aviva, Google, AIG, Digital Europe, The Software Alliance, European Banking Federation, AmCham EU, and Bitkom. It is advisable to bear this point in mind when reading up the responses".

As a consortium of organizations, we are pleased to have offered a collective regional perspective on the challenges in ethics and data protection, but, at the same time, we are concerned that the industry widely dominates such discussions in Artificial Intelligence in detriment of the public interest.

In this context of almost no participation by civil society, the contribution of Al Sur seems to be more relevant as it highlights the public interest in the debate promoted by the Global Privacy Assembly. As the report of this organization shows, Al Sur's presentation stood out in the following aspects:

- It must be a collaboration of the data protection authorities with other authorities.

- Conditions must be established for an effective Data Protection Authority.

- Attention should be paid to issues of group privacy and discrimination against vulnerable and marginalized groups in the context of Artificial Intelligence.

- The international frameworks that govern the development and use of Artificial Intelligence must take into account the diversity of realities experienced throughout the world. There is a potential danger that frameworks based primarily on experiences from the Global North may not respond to the various cases of local AI use in other regions.