MTN head Ralph Mupita has been named a founding member of the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU’s) AI for Good Global Commission. The commission, co-chaired by Rwandan president Paul Kagame and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, has the task of helping to advance the responsible development of AI and its deployment.AI investment has grown exponentially in recent years, driven by the rapid adoption and popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT since it was launched in November 2022. As such, many questions continue to be raised about the rapid pace at which AI systems have infiltrated many parts of everyday life and business. Public and private sector organisations around the world are grappling with issues of governance, ethics, cost and access to the technology. Mupita is part of the 44-member commission, whose deputy chair is Doreen Bogdan-Martin, secretary-general of the ITU. The ITU is the specialised UN agency responsible for information and communication technologies.The commission’s member list is a “who’s who” of high-ranking officials, including Estonian President Alar Karis, Nigerian communications, innovation and digital economy minister Bosun Tijani and Unesco director-general Khaled El-Enany.Business representatives include Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Google senior vice-president for research, technology and society James Manyika, and Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang. The commission is set to build on work done by the ITU and the Unesco Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development. The AI for Good Global Commission is scheduled to hold its inaugural meeting in Geneva from July 7-10.For its part, MTN has AI central to its Ambition 2030 strategy, aiming to unlock R30bn in value over the next three to five years as it accelerates deployment of the technology.While many organisations are starting to use AI in their operations, it comes at a cost. Rising IT costs are now raising questions about replacing humans with AI, with the one type of cost simply being replaced by another. MTN has committed as much as $2bn to building data centres through joint ventures. It also has plans to turn its cellphone tower sites into “mini data centres” for AI workloads, a concept referred to as “AI-RAN” [radio access network].Mupita said, “It’s an honour to be one of the founding commissioners of the AI for Good Global Commission. At MTN Group we believe that the developments in AI have the potential to advance health, education, food security and industrial productivity. We also believe that AI must be safe, ethical and globally inclusive. These perspectives we have at MTN align fully with the work of this Global Commission”.In early 2025, Mupita was elected deputy chair of global telecoms body the GSM Association (GSMA).Business Day