It’s Time to Move Past AI Nationalism

In 2025, there will be a course correction in AI and geopolitics, as world leaders increasingly understand that their national interests are best served through the promise of a more positive and cooperative future. In 2023, at the same time as there was record investment in AI, tech experts, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, published an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, while others compared AI to a “nuclear war” and a “pandemic.” This has understandably clouded the judgment of political leaders, pushing the geopolitical conversation about AI into some disturbing places. The Chinese “New Generation AI Development Plan” aimed for the country to reach a “world-leading level” of AI innovation by 2025 and become a major AI innovation center by 2030. Successive US governments also managed to get support at the UN for a treaty that protected space from nuclearization, specified that no nation could colonize the moon, and ensured that space was “the province of all mankind.” That same political leadership has been lacking in AI. President Macron is already reframing his event away from a strict “safety” framing of AI risk, and towards one that, in his words, focuses on the more pragmatic “solutions and standards.” In a virtual address to the Seoul Summit, the French president made clear that he intends to address a much broader range of policy issues, including how to actually ensure society benefits from AI.