DBAI Labs

Global AI Foreign Policy Proposal: A ‘Duty Bearer’ AI Secretariat

Executive Summary

We propose Canada lead the creation of a 'Duty Bearer’ AI Global Secretariat – a new global secretariat tasked to embed ethical accountability, the Human Rights Conventions, and agreed global values into AI itself. Rather than competing for limited ODA resources through a new ‘Global Fund for AI’, the secretariat would organize and maximize existing resources, deploying a global orchestration tool built on existing AI engines to foster respectful, collaborative dialogue and accelerate achievement of critical efforts such as the Sustainable Development Goals.  

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Drawing inspiration from Nelson Mandela's founding vision for The Elders, the secretariat would deploy a global AI tool in the public interest, accountable not to markets or political cycles, but to a Global Stewardship Council of respected, purpose-driven leaders, guided by the integrity and collective wisdom needed to steer AI in service of humanity.

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Canada's Strategic Opportunity

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Canada has an unprecedented global leadership opportunity to reassert Canadian values in shaping the direction of the most consequential technological revolution in history. Amid the race to deploy AI faster, Canada can lead the global conversation to deploy AI better. 

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A Canadian Contribution to the Global Dialogue on AI Governance

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The Global Digital Compact is an important first step that sets out the long-term objectives and principles of global digital cooperation – yet it lacks a concrete operational mechanism to embed these principles, including a ‘do no harm’ framework, in the technology itself. Moreover, it lacks an operational plan with the capacity to deploy accountable AI in the public interest and at scale.

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This creates a window for Canada to introduce the concept of a duty-bearing AI global secretariat as a tangible proposal to move the discussion from aspiration to implementation, and in doing so create the real possibility of achieving AI in the public interest. Building on consultation, momentum, and support through the Global Dialogue process, Canada could be positioned to lead a UN General Assembly resolution to create a duty-bearing AI secretariat in the fall of 2026.

A globally accountable public interest AI could ignite a new chapter and revitalized approach to global cooperation. It could transform international relations from transactional interactions to true partnerships (SDG17), where nations recognize their fundamental interdependence and shared destiny.

Why this Matters: The Cost of Misalignment

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The Center for Humane Technology (CHT) asserts that humanity’s ‘First Contact’ with AI was social media – and humanity lost. Social media's evolution taught us that intention, accountability, and incentives matter in determining whether a technological revolution will see the benefits outweigh the risks.  

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While social media platforms delivered many benefits, a fundamental misalignment of the incentives and accountability caused damage across a vast range of issues, from mental health, privacy, and child protection to democracy itself. Social media companies, structured as for-profit corporations accountable primarily to shareholders, created business models that inadvertently prioritized engagement over wellbeing. The imperative to maximize user attention to attract advertising revenue transformed human attention itself into a commodity – something to be harvested, packaged and sold. Without clear duties of care to protect users from harm, these platforms operate without the robust mandatory legal safety protections that govern virtually every other industry affecting public safety.

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The result was that we inadvertently created a 'race to the bottom of the brain stem' , with serious unintended consequences across nearly every aspect of life. Algorithms ranking content based on engagement led to shorter attention spans, increased polarization, misinformation proliferation, an erosion of social trust, trust in institutions, and in our capacity for shared truth and democratic discourse.

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The Inflection Point: Getting ‘Second Contact’ Right

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The public release of generative AI marks a turning point as profound as the Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution, and the Social Media Era combined with the timeline accelerated and the impact exponential.

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With a duty-bearing AI secretariat we have an historic opportunity to set intention, incentives, and accountability for the global public interest – unleashing a 'race to the top of the brain stem' that helps humanity achieve our greatest aspirations and collective goals. If AI reflects the values embedded in its training and use, commercial AI is learning to optimize for values that mirror greed (maximizing reward) and fear (avoiding punishment). A secretariat at the global level would mirror our highest agreed shared values, designed to optimize for human dignity and flourishing. The following outlines how this vision could be operationalized.

The Secretariat:  What it Is, How it Could Work

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What It Is

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A new global AI secretariat charged with deploying an AI orchestration tool. Both would be conceived as duty bearers to the UN Human Rights Conventions and other globally agreed frameworks, fundamentally designed to do no harm and help humanity fully realize rights and responsibilities under international standards. The secretariat would represent a fundamental reimagining of artificial intelligence deployment – moving from profit-driven engagement models to a rights-based system governed by our agreed frameworks that ensure accountability to humanity's best interests.

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The secretariat would oversee the deployment of a tool designed specifically to assist humanity in accelerating achievement of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and 169 associated targets. It would act as a global coordination and optimization mechanism for human development, actively bringing together research and best practices, contextualizing and scaling successful interventions across different jurisdictions, mindful of cultural contexts.

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How It Works

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The Secretariat as Global Entity

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Moving from aspiration to action, rather than creating a 'Global Fund for AI' and competing for limited Overseas Development Aid (ODA), the secretariat will remove silos by organizing what already exists, maximizing the efficiency and impact of existing resources.

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The secretariat can ensure that our highest shared values and collective wisdom are governing the use of a global AI tool in the common interest. Concretely, this ethical guidance can be embedded in AI for adherence to purpose-driven governance. Such a secretariat can unleash a 'race to the top of the brainstem', activating compassion, insight, and integrity over the current trend toward reaction and fear.

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The secretariat would operate under a dual governance structure designed to ensure both ethical accountability and operational effectiveness. Operations would be managed by an executive board with balanced North-South representation, bringing expertise in AI and sustainable development, similar to structures like the Global Fund or the Global Partnership for Education. However, this operational board would be bound to the guidance and approval of a Global Stewardship Council composed of humanity's most respected wisdom keepers, contemplative teachers, Indigenous elders, faith leaders, and ethical thought leaders who have demonstrated sustained commitment to human dignity over personal advancement. The Council would hold veto authority over strategic decisions, ensuring the secretariat remains accountable not to markets or political cycles, but to the collective wisdom traditions that have guided human flourishing across cultures and millennia.

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The Secretariat would enact:

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• Information hierarchy and truth standards: Instead of the commercial AI balance of 'helpfulness' with avoiding controversial topics, the secretariat would be mandated to prioritize evidence-based information in support of human flourishing and actively correct misinformation threatening public health or human rights.

• Assumption of human potential: Rather than simply providing answers and recommendations, it will consistently invite partners toward their most thoughtful, compassionate, and conscience-driven interactions.

• Collective consciousness: It would consistently frame singular problems within larger social contexts and invite collaborative solutions to achieve deeper shared goals.

The Secretariat as Tool

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The secretariat would oversee the deployment of a global orchestration tool. This tool would use current and future AI resources to move from fragmented, disparate, disconnected efforts to coordination. Such a tool, deployed across the SDGs, would significantly accelerate progress toward goal achievement through several breakthrough capacities including:

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• Maximizing reach and impact of existing resources: It would map and integrate available human capital, financial resources, infrastructure, technological, and other assets already present in the target region, avoiding duplication or exclusion.

• Identifying the highest Return On Investment (ROI) interventions: It would pinpoint specific actions and programs to yield the greatest return on investment in terms of collaborations or SDG impact, maximizing social, environmental, and economic benefits with optimized resource use.

• Innovation acceleration: It would identify promising research directions, connect researchers globally, and generate solutions by combining insights from different fields and contexts.

• Holistic processing of all available data: It would aggregate and analyze vast, disparate datasets from public sources and robust government, NGO, and academic repositories. The tool will reveal patterns, gaps, and intervention points and provide unprecedented visibility into bottlenecks, opportunities, and progress – including data generation and quality improvements.

Conclusion

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History will judge whether our generation harnessed AI's exponential power for human flourishing or allowed misaligned incentives to repeat the mistakes of recent history at an unprecedented scale. Canada has the opportunity to build upon our proudest foreign policy achievements and lead an international effort to dream big and guide the current technological revolution toward reaching humanity's highest potential.

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Sources

1. The AI Dilemma, Center for Human Technology.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ

2. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/download/tristan-harris-testimony

3. CHT speaks of ‘second contact’ as the release of Large Language Models or ‘Generative AI’

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Authored 02 October 2025 by:

• Amanda Sussman former Chair of the Alliance for Protecting Children’s Rights and Safety Online

• Patricia Prewitt former Google Director & General Manager of an AI Moonshot Project at Google X

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Submitted to the Canadian AI Strategy Task Force, 03 October 2025

Minor edits have been made to reflect global developments.