While AI companies issue ever more lurid warnings about the dangers of their own products, the United States has set its face against global governance of AI. It might happen anyway.
A global scheme for AI
Ahead of Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington last week, there was speculation that he and Donald Trump might agree to work together to manage the risks associated with AI. In the end, they agreed to establish a hotline for the United States and China to alert each other to high-risk incidents but Trump made it clear he had no interest in deeper co-operation on the issue.
“We didn’t spend that much time talking about it,” he told reporters. “I would rather not integrate because we’re leading by a lot. When you’re leading, you don’t open it up to each other.”
In his speech to the United Nations in New York a few days earlier, Trump said Washington would oppose any “globalist scheme of control” on AI. His science and technology adviser, Michael Kratsios, told the security council last week that international dialogue on AI “in this forum and in others, cannot be allowed to drift toward global governance”.
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Global governance is, however, precisely what much of the rest of the world thinks is required to ensure that such a powerful and potentially transformative technology is not controlled by a handful of companies or by a couple of major powers.
Singapore’s foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, told the general assembly on Sunday that, as the only top-level international institution with universal membership, the UN should consider taking a similar approach to AI as it did to climate change.
“We must explore all options, including the idea of a UN framework convention on AI safeguards,” he said.
“We may also need an international institution that can perform for AI some of the functions that currently exist for setting common technical standards in other domains ... Ultimately, the global commons are best protected by collective action, agreed through an inclusive process.”
Balakrishnan was speaking after more than 20 leaders, including Taoiseach Micheál Martin, endorsed a call by the prime ministers of Norway and Finland, Jonas Gahr Støre and Alexander Stubb, for international controls on frontier AI models. The initiative calls for mandatory, independent safety testing before new AI models are deployed and international reporting of safety incidents.
It also calls on UN member states to explore the creation of “an international institution, able to set standards, enable verification and convene states when capability thresholds are crossed”. This proposal, which comes with a call for AI to be developed and used in line with international law, sounds something like the “globalist scheme of control” that the Americans are warning against.
China, the only major player in developing AI outside the US, did not sign up to the Norwegian/Finnish initiative but unlike Washington, Beijing is not opposed to international oversight of the technology within the UN framework. At the same meeting of the security council last week where Kratsios warned against global governance of AI, Chinese ambassador Fu Cong said the UN had an important role to play in balancing the technology’s potential with its dangers.
“We should enhance alignment and co-ordination of AI development strategies, governance and technical standards, and form a consensus-based global governance framework at an early date so as to build institutional guardrails that preserve international peace and security,” he said.
Fu also took a swipe at Washington’s Pax Silica, which aims to make western supply chains for AI and semiconductors less dependent on China. He said that every country should be free to choose AI technologies, products and services based on its own needs and on market forces.
“The practice of cobbling together exclusive small circles in the tech field and forcing countries to pick sides essentially politicises and instrumentalises science and technology issues, serving the attempt of a handful of major powers to monopolise technological advantages and pursue digital hegemony,” he said.
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