Overview
- South African President Cyril Ramaphosa publicly endorsed China’s proposal for a BRICS artificial intelligence ecosystem and pushed the bloc to turn the idea into an operational program.
- He proposed an international mechanism for independent scientific evaluation of AI that would require meaningful human control and mandatory reporting of serious incidents.
- Ramaphosa warned that unchecked AI could enable advanced cyber operations, assist biological threats, enable mass surveillance, and act autonomously, and he cited industry calls for external audits of AI firms.
- He linked the AI push to other BRICS projects such as the Vaccine Research Centre and the Intelligent Telescope and Data Network and said shared technology should boost medical sovereignty and climate resilience for developing countries.
- Ramaphosa also urged deeper financial cooperation through a larger New Development Bank and greater local‑currency use to back the bloc’s technology and development goals, a change that could reshape funding for sovereign AI capacity.