From Davos to New Delhi, Rupture of Global Order Tests AI Governance

(Alison Gillwald – Tech Policy Press) While the focus of the latest geopolitical and geoeconomic machinations is on more traditional notions of power, territorial sovereignty, and securing access to oil and trade, this is merely the backdrop for a struggle for dominance over advanced, data-driven technologies and the critical resources required to develop and deploy them. A close reading of the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), for example, reveals that ‘strategic assets’ being referred to are data infrastructures and artificial intelligence systems. And in response to such US posturing on its doorstep, Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney is pushing for “sovereign AI” to maintain control over technology within national borders, investing heavily in computational infrastructure traditionally supplied by the US, while collaborating with international partners to advance AI safety and security. Carney recently struck a trade deal with China, the US’s biggest AI rival. Through a new Office of Digital Transformation, artificial intelligence is now a cornerstone of Canadian economic policy aimed at driving productivity and industrial innovation. This is the important context for the Davos discourse, couched in references to the Cold War era, the end of the international order, and alarm about the possible deployment of dual-use AI technology in warfare. No mention there of the amplification of inequality by general-purpose AI technology cutting across all aspects of the economy and society, and little reference not only to the uneven impacts of harms on marginalized communities but also to the unprecedented opportunities associated with advanced data-driven technologies—some of the issues which will be reflected at least to some degree in the Global South focus of AI Impact Summit taking place this week in New Delhi. – From Davos to New Delhi, Rupture of Global Order Tests AI Governance | TechPolicy.Press