Sara Rendtorff-Smith

Happy International Day of Women in Diplomacy! Today, we celebrate all our female colleagues around the world and their critical contributions to international cooperation, peace and security. We are proud to have two women ambassadors representing Denmark on the UNSC 🇩🇰🇺🇳

#AI can be used to fuel conflicts and to promote peace.   At Arria meeting on #AI, Denmark🇩🇰 stressed that our priority must be to ensure the responsible use of trustworthy AI for peace and security, in compliance with international law. The #UNSC has an important role to play

Denmark’s Presidency of the #UNSC has come to a close.   At the curtain call, we owe a round of applause to our whole team for their hard work and wholehearted commitment to our mission. You have walked the talk. Thank you all. We wish France bonne chance with their Presidency!

Read full statement here: shorturl.at/IIA7k

Team Denmark 🇩🇰 is thrilled to assume the #UNSC presidency for the month of March.

🚨 A Europol-coordinated operation, led by German authorities and involving law enforcement from eight countries, has led to the takedown of the two largest cybercrime forums in the world. More in our press release ⤵️ europol.europa.eu/media-press/ne…

Today, the #UNSC was briefed by @UNEnvoySyria and @UNReliefChief on the situation in #Syria. Denmark stands in solidarity with the Syrian people with hope for a brighter future, and calls for #accountability for crimes committed as well as the scaling up of aid deliveries.

For months, diplomats have met to negotiate questions at the forefront of the #digital agenda. Finally, the fruits of our labor is here: #GlobalDigitalCompact. It’s been an immense privilege to be part of this historic process with salient lessons in #multistakeholder engagement.

@DapoAkandeLaw @CIJ_ICJ @PCA_CPA @FCDOGovUK My heartfelt congratulations @DapoAkandeLaw!

It is an honour to be the United Kingdom's intended nominee for election to the International Court of Justice @CIJ_ICJ in 2026. I am grateful to the UK national group of the @PCA_CPA for the nomination and @FCDOGovUK for their support gov.uk/government/new…

UN member states reached an agreement on a new @UN Cybercrime Convention 🌐 This new Convention will prevent and combat cybercrime, enhance international cooperation and guarantee safeguards for fundamental rights. Find out more ⤵️ #securityEU

Years of negotiations spanning New York & Vienna finally paid off today, as all 193 Member States of the @UN adopted the first 🌍 instrument for #cyberspace. Until the very last moment, it was a struggle to keep strong #humanrights language & appropriate safeguards in the text.

📢Applications open today! The @WorldBank has relaunched its Junior Professional Associates (JPA) program. This is an excellent opportunity for recent graduates looking to start a career in international development. Apply before August 9: worldbank.org/en/about/caree…

Huge investigation from @proof__news today: We reveal the trove of YouTube videos that are being used to train AI models (including Anthropic's Claude). Yes, it includes all your favorite YouTubers - from @hankgreen to @MrBeast to @khanacademy. proofnews.org/apple-nvidia-a…

Here's my thesis on what went wrong with generative AI from a business perspective and how that's changing now. When ChatGPT launched, people found a thousand unexpected uses for it. This got AI developers overexcited. They completely misunderstood the market, underestimating the huge gap between proofs of concept and reliable products. This misunderstanding led to two opposing but equally flawed approaches to commercializing LLMs. OpenAI and Anthropic focused on building models and not worrying about products. For example, it took 6 months for OpenAI to bother to release a ChatGPT iOS app and 8 months for an Android app! Google and Microsoft shoved AI into everything in a panicked race, without thinking about which products would actually benefit from AI and how they should be integrated. Both groups of companies forgot the “make something people want” mantra. The generality of LLMs allowed developers to fool themselves into thinking that they were exempt from the need to find a product-market fit, as if prompting is a replacement for carefully designed products or features. OpenAI and Anthropic’s DIY approach meant that early adopters of LLMs disproportionately tended to be bad actors, since they are more invested in figuring out how to adapt new technologies for their purposes, whereas everyday users want easy-to-use products. This has contributed to a poor public perception of the technology. (A point we make in the AI Snake Oil book: amazon.com/Snake-Oil-Arti…) Meanwhile the AI-in-your-face approach by Microsoft and Google has led to features that are occasionally useful and more often annoying. It also led to many self-owns due to inadequate testing like Microsoft's early Sydney chatbot and Google's Gemini image generator. This has also caused a backlash. But things are changing. OpenAI and Anthropic seem to be transitioning from research labs focused on a speculative future to something resembling regular product companies. If you take all the human-interest elements out of the OpenAI boardroom drama, it was fundamentally about the company's shift from creating gods to building products. Google and Microsoft are slower to learn, but my guess is that Apple will force them to change. Last year it was seen as a laggard on AI, but it seems obvious in retrospect that the slow and thoughtful approach that Apple showcased at WWDC is more likely to resonate with users. Still, we shouldn't expect changes overnight. There are unsolved research challenges when it comes to making LLM-based AI assistants that actually work: aisnakeoil.com/p/new-paper-ai… Enterprise adoption will likely be even slower. the barriers include integrating it into existing products and workflows and training people to use it productively while avoiding its pitfalls. We should expect this to happen on a timescale of a decade rather than a year. If you want clear analyses of AI that look past the hype, subscribe to the AI Snake Oil newsletter. aisnakeoil.com

Just launched! The #AIforGood Global Summit 2024 Snapshot Report in collaboration with @Deloitte is now available online. Discover use cases, key moments and global initiatives to harness AI's transformative role in accelerating the @UN #SDGs: s41721.pcdn.co/wp-content/upl…

📢Call for Essays on “#AI from the Global Majority” of the @UN @intgovforum Coalition on Data and Artificial Intelligence Governance intgovforum.org/en/filedepot_d… *Deadline for submissions is 25 August*

Thanks to @ZambiaUN @SwedenUN for an updated #GlobalDigitalCompact. In today’s Ambassador level meeting, we emphasized the importance of shared principles 👩🏽‍🤝‍👨🏻 and common objectives 🫱🏼‍🫲🏾 firmly rooted in the int’l #humanrights framework 🌍 ➡️ shorturl.at/j6hgV

🇩🇰 supports the joint call 📢 by 63 States & 🇪🇺 for an open, secure, stable & peaceful ICT environment in compliance with int’l law. Malicious use of ICTs can work as threat multipliers. The #UNSC must understand & address these threats.

Today 🇩🇰 delivers a statement on behalf of 🇩🇰🇫🇮🇮🇸🇳🇴🇸🇪 at the #UNSC meeting on #Ukraine after the successful Peace Summit this past weekend. Our unified message: Sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity are non-negotiable #StandWithUkraine ➡️ shorturl.at/9alE4

Tomorrow, leaders and diplomats will gather in #Switzerland for the Summit on Peace in #Ukraine. Who is going, who is staying away, and what can the summit achieve? crisisgroup.org/europe-central…