G7 leaders pledge action against foreign interference
Global News
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with Pope Francis and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G7 summit. Trudeau congratulated Modi for winning a third term in office.
Leaders of the G7 countries say they are more concerned than ever about foreign interference and plan to create a “collective response framework” to counter foreign threats to democracies.
That pledge is part of a 43-page communique released Friday by the leaders of Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Germany and Japan.
It said government ministers have been asked to get the framework together by the end of the year, and that it will include publicly exposing “foreign operations of information manipulation.”
The communique also called on tech companies to step up their efforts to prevent and counter foreign interference and information manipulation, particularly through the abuse of artificial intelligence.
The focus on foreign interference and its threats to democracy comes at a time when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has been embroiled in controversy over allegations that foreign states including China and India have tried meddling in the last two federal elections.
And the concern over AI comes after a warning about that technology from Pope Francis, who on Friday became the first pope to address G7 leaders.
The pontiff counselled the leaders to centre humanity in the development of AI and ensure that decisions about when to use weapons or even less-lethal tools are always made by humans and not machines.
“We would condemn humanity to a future without hope if we took away people’s ability to make decisions about themselves and their lives, by dooming them to depend on the choices of machines,” Francis said.