Future historians may well mark the second half of March as the moment when the era of artificial intelligence (AI) truly began. In the space of just two weeks, the world witnessed the launch of GPT-4, Bard, Claude, Midjourney V5, Security Copilot and many other AI tools that have surpassed almost everyone’s expectations. These new AI models’ apparent sophistication has beaten most experts’ predictions by a decade.
For centuries, breakthrough innovations — from the invention of the printing press and the steam engine to the rise of air travel and the Internet — have propelled economic development, expanded access to information, and vastly improved healthcare and other essential services. However, such transformative developments have also had negative implications, and the rapid deployment of AI tools will be no different.
AI can perform tasks that individuals are loathe to do. It can also deliver education and healthcare to millions of people who are neglected under existing frameworks. Furthermore, it can greatly enhance research and development, potentially ushering in a new golden age of innovation. However, it can also supercharge the production and dissemination of fake news; displace human labor on a large scale; and create dangerous, disruptive tools that are potentially inimical to our very existence.
Illustration: Tania Chou
Specifically, many believe that the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI) — an AI that can teach itself to perform any cognitive task that humans can do — will pose an existential threat to humanity. A carelessly designed AGI (or one governed by unknown “black box” processes) could carry out its tasks in ways that compromise fundamental elements of our humanity. After that, what it means to be human could come to be mediated by AGI.
Clearly, AI and other emerging technologies call for better governance, especially at the global level. However, diplomats and international policymakers have historically treated technology as a “sectoral” matter best left to energy, finance or defense ministries — a myopic perspective that is reminiscent of how, until recently, climate governance was viewed as the exclusive preserve of scientific and technical experts. Now, with climate debates commanding center stage, climate governance is seen as a superordinate domain that comprises many others, including foreign policy. Accordingly, today’s governance architecture aims to reflect the global nature of the issue, with all its nuances and complexities.
As discussions at the G7’s recent summit in Hiroshima, Japan, suggest, technological governance will require a similar approach. After all, AI and other emerging technologies will dramatically change the sources, distribution and projection of power around the world. They will allow for novel offensive and defensive capabilities, and create entirely new domains for collision, contest and conflict — including in cyberspace and outer space. Moreover, they will determine what we consume, inevitably concentrating the returns from economic growth in some regions, industries, and firms, while depriving others of similar opportunities and capabilities.
Importantly, technologies such as AI will have a substantial impact on fundamental rights and freedoms, our relationships, the issues we care about and even our most dearly held beliefs. With its feedback loops and reliance on our own data, AI models will exacerbate existing biases and strain many countries’ already tenuous social contracts.
That means our response must include numerous international accords. For example, ideally we would forge new agreements (at the level of the UN) to limit the use of certain technologies on the battlefield. A treaty banning lethal autonomous weapons outright would be a good start; agreements to regulate cyberspace — especially offensive actions conducted by autonomous bots — will also be necessary.
New trade regulations are also imperative. Unfettered exports of certain technologies can give governments powerful tools to suppress dissent and radically augment their military capabilities. Moreover, we still need to do a much better job of ensuring a level playing field in the digital economy, including through appropriate taxation of such activities.
As G7 leaders already seem to recognize, with the stability of open societies possibly at stake, it is in democratic countries’ interest to develop a common approach to AI regulation. Governments are acquiring unprecedented abilities to manufacture consent and manipulate opinion. When combined with massive surveillance systems, the analytical power of advanced AI tools can create technological leviathans: all-knowing states and corporations with the power to shape citizen behavior and repress it, if necessary, within and across borders. It is important not only to support UNESCO’s efforts to create a global framework for AI ethics, but also to push for a global Charter of Digital Rights.
The thematic focus of tech diplomacy implies the need for new strategies of engagement with emerging powers. For example, how Western economies approach their partnerships with the world’s largest democracy, India, could make or break the success of such diplomacy. India’s economy will probably be the world’s third largest (after the US and China) by 2028. Its growth has been extraordinary, much of it reflecting prowess in information technology and the digital economy. More to the point, India’s views on emerging technologies matter immensely. How it regulates and supports advances in AI will determine how billions of people use it.
Engaging with India is a priority for the US and the EU, as evidenced by the recent US-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology and the EU-India Trade and Technology Council, which met in Brussels this month. However, ensuring that these efforts succeed will require a reasonable accommodation of cultural and economic contexts and interests. Appreciating such nuances will help us achieve a prosperous and secure digital future. The alternative is an AI-generated free for all.
Manuel Muniz is provost of IE University and dean of the IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs. Samir Saran is president of the Observer Research Foundation.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
We are used to hearing that whenever something happens, it means Taiwan is about to fall to China. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) cannot change the color of his socks without China experts claiming it means an invasion is imminent. So, it is no surprise that what happened in Venezuela over the weekend triggered the knee-jerk reaction of saying that Taiwan is next. That is not an opinion on whether US President Donald Trump was right to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro the way he did or if it is good for Venezuela and the world. There are other, more qualified
China’s recent aggressive military posture around Taiwan simply reflects the truth that China is a millennium behind, as Kobe City Councilor Norihiro Uehata has commented. While democratic countries work for peace, prosperity and progress, authoritarian countries such as Russia and China only care about territorial expansion, superpower status and world dominance, while their people suffer. Two millennia ago, the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius (孟子) would have advised Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that “people are the most important, state is lesser, and the ruler is the least important.” In fact, the reverse order is causing the great depression in China right now,
This should be the year in which the democracies, especially those in East Asia, lose their fear of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China principle” plus its nuclear “Cognitive Warfare” coercion strategies, all designed to achieve hegemony without fighting. For 2025, stoking regional and global fear was a major goal for the CCP and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), following on Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Little Red Book admonition, “We must be ruthless to our enemies; we must overpower and annihilate them.” But on Dec. 17, 2025, the Trump Administration demonstrated direct defiance of CCP terror with its record US$11.1 billion arms
The immediate response in Taiwan to the extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by the US over the weekend was to say that it was an example of violence by a major power against a smaller nation and that, as such, it gave Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) carte blanche to invade Taiwan. That assessment is vastly oversimplistic and, on more sober reflection, likely incorrect. Generally speaking, there are three basic interpretations from commentators in Taiwan. The first is that the US is no longer interested in what is happening beyond its own backyard, and no longer preoccupied with regions in other
RSS