The summit was a "new annual youth leadership initiative" aimed at getting young people under 30 years of age more involved and heard regarding the trilateral relationship between the three nations, along with Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. It was primarily run by the East-West Center in Washington, with support from the Seoul and Tokyo U.S. Embassies, alongside the Korean Ministry of Education and City of Busan.

Over the course of the summit, we were able to hear from ambassadors, government/embassy officials, and members of the U.S. State Department through panels and dinner conversations. In addition, over the three days, as delegates, we formed a joint consensus on the direction we believed the trilateral relationship should head in, which can be found here: Roadmap Report_USROKJPN Trilat_EWC_0724.pdf (eastwestcenter.org). This took place through a Camp David Simulation, in which each country’s delegates jointly proposed their visions for the trilateral relationship and further talks led to the final document. Our discussions covered a wide variety of topics, like social programs/exchanges, finances, national security, and the environment.

Another major component of the conference was the pitch competition, in which teams composed of delegates from the different regions formed a sample plan for trilateral cooperation in a certain field. Based on our interests and areas of knowledge, our team was chosen to be centered around technology and economic cooperation. Ultimately, we settled on centering our presentation around ethical guidelines and governance regarding emerging technologies. Of course, there are many subfields we could have chosen to focus on, and we considered different areas like biotech regulations and the semiconductor industry. Since one of the most prominent current emerging technologies is artificial intelligence, we chose to center our presentation around establishing a trilateral doctrine regarding AI usage.

In 2023, the leaders of each of the three countries in the trilateral relationship (United States, Korea, and Japan) met at the Camp David summit (which created this summit as well) and mentioned the importance of joint technology innovation and each nation’s work in shaping international guidelines for the safe and trustworthy development of AI technologies. Our team felt that in regards to current technologies like AI, and further innovations, the trilateral relationship could go one step further by starting new joint initiatives. The initiatives we proposed were mostly regarding the proper implementation of existing critical technologies (like AI), the identification of upcoming “emerging and critical technology,” and identifying other areas where trilateral cooperation would be necessary and beneficial.

Through preliminary research, we found that while each nation in the trilateral relationship had recently worked on guidelines regarding AI as an emerging technology, there was not much collaboration. The United States in 2020 enacted the National AI Act and has several current AI usage frameworks from the DOD, USAID, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In Korea, in 2020, the government introduced the “4th-Industrial Revolution Humane AI Standards.” Between 2019 and 2022, Japan introduced some preliminary AI guidelines, those being the Social Principles of Human-Centric AI and Governance Guidelines for Implementation of AI Principles, which were non-binding in nature.

For AI specifically, we came up with some main tenets that would make up a potential AI principles framework. One of these was democratic values, which would ensure the trilateral countries’ AI development, research, and deployment “upholds the principles of transparency, accountability, inclusivity, and commitment to humane use.” Another was regarding data governance and how the nations should include “unified principles to ensure data protection and ownership with robust privacy standards and secure protocols.” Since each of the countries has its own unique set of ideals and customs, we discussed the importance of considering and maintaining aspects of current domestic AI ethics codes, combining a new trilateral one with the status quo. Some specific topics we highlighted for further discussion were data privacy and usage, environmental AI impacts across the trilateral nations/wider Indo-Pacific region, cultural sensitivities/the notion of “sovereign” AI, and the detection of AI ethics violations.

Our team decided that a diverse task force would be well-equipped for these complex and important discussions. In deciding which individuals may prove to be valuable contributors in decisions regarding AI guidelines, we referenced the committee the White House put together and the experiences of our team in our different fields. We proposed that the task force was to composed of policymakers, executives, journalists, members of civil society, industry experts, and academics/researchers. Each nation would also have a designated representative facilitator that would interface between the task force and the country’s relevant regulatory body. It was important for us to acknowledge that some members who would be important to include in a potential task force, particularly those in industry, might not be comfortable talking directly with government regulatory bodies. With the representative facilitator serving as a liaison between the groups, our team believed the conversations and decisions were more likely to be fruitful.