UNESCO AI ethics forum in Riyadh puts health governance in focus on day one

The first day of the fourth UNESCO Global Forum on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence (GFEAI 2026) concluded on Tuesday in Riyadh, drawing ministers from UNESCO member states alongside senior officials, experts, researchers and policymakers. Health emerged as a recurring reference point across the day’s sessions, both as a driver of public optimism about AI and as a priority area for governance and accountability.

Tomas Lamanauskas, Deputy Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), said people in low- and middle-income countries are markedly more optimistic about AI than those in developed economies, an “optimism gap” he linked partly to expectations around health. He cited survey data suggesting around two-thirds of people in these countries anticipate using AI in education, health or work within the next year, and pointed to better health services as one of the concrete benefits AI could deliver if matched with responsible governance.

The day also marked five years since UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence was adopted, discussed in a fireside chat between Dr Dafna Feinholz, Chief of UNESCO’s Bioethics and Ethics of Science and Technology Section, and Prof David Leslie of Queen Mary University of London. Feinholz set out the reach of UNESCO’s Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM), a self-assessment tool now completed by 78 countries across multiple policy dimensions, which has informed regional AI strategies in 95 countries and national policies in more than 25.

Health governance featured most directly in a ministerial panel moderated by Dr Latifa Al-Abdulkarim, a Shura Council member. Ghana’s Minister of Communications, Digital Technology and Innovation named health, alongside finance and energy, as a “non-negotiable” priority sector for AI oversight, arguing that accountability cannot be waived to an algorithm when the consequences are severe — citing a wrong diagnosis as an example of where responsibility must sit with an identifiable party. He said the RAM process had also underlined the need to tier AI governance by risk level, contrasting the oversight required for a medical diagnostic tool with that needed for a lower-stakes application such as a chatbot.

In a separate ministerial panel, Laos’s Assistant Minister for Technology and Communication said the country’s own RAM report had identified healthcare as one of the sectors set to benefit from AI, alongside public service delivery, education and economic growth. He cautioned, however, that adoption should not outpace safeguards, citing gaps in AI-specific regulation, a shortage of digital skills, and a widening divide between public and private schools in access to AI education — noting that only around 5% of Laos’s public schools currently have internet access.

Also on day one, Dr Majed Alshehri, Acting Director-General of the International Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Research and Ethics (ICAIRE), a UNESCO Category 2 centre hosted in Saudi Arabia, outlined the centre’s role in translating global ethics principles into local capacity-building and regional cooperation, including work across health, education and energy sectors, though without health-specific detail.