Recap of the 2018 ITU Plenipotentiary: From Connecting the World to Investigating Digital Applications and Services | Council on Foreign Relations

The difficulty of finding a middle path is why negotiations on topics like artificial intelligence and big data were so fraught in Dubai: as much as developing countries hoped ITU could provide relatively quick fixes for the deluge of ICT issues they increasingly face, many developed countries were concerned about mission creep, duplicating existing processes, and ITU entering fields in which it lacks expertise. The Dubai resolutions show this tension, with many references to “in collaboration with relevant bodies,” “information sharing” as well as to ITU-specific studies and activities.