Minding the AI Power Gap: The Urgency of Equality for Global Governance

Gordon LaForge is a Senior Policy Analyst with New America’s Planetary Politics Initiative and a lecturer at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. Patricia Gruver-Barr is the co-founder of the Tech Diplomacy Network, a Senior Fellow at New America’s Planetary Politics Initiative, a former Science Attaché for the British and Québec governments, and a tech policy consultant.  World leaders gather in May 2023 at the G7 Hiroshima Summit. Wikimedia Global action to govern AI is picking up speed. In November, the UK government hosted an international AI Safety Summit and issued the Bletchley Declaration on managing the risks of cutting-edge AI systems. At the UN in New York, the Tech Envoy convened a High-Level Advisory Body on AI with 32 experts from government, civil society, and industry to develop governance recommendations. The G7’s Hiroshima AI Process issued a policy framework for AI, plus industry- and civil society-led groupings such as the Global Partnership on AI and the Frontier Model Forum of leading AI companies.  Although it is early days, the momentum for global AI governance is a refreshing course correction from previous efforts to mitigate the risks and harms of novel digital technologies. The failure to develop regulatory frameworks and shared norms for policy responses to cyberattacks, data protection, and algorithmic decision-making has allowed human rights abuses, threats to democracy, and real-world violence to proliferate. As AI develops at an exponential pace, policymakers and industry leaders seem genuinely keen to get ahead of AI risks before greater societal harm…Minding the AI Power Gap: The Urgency of Equality for Global Governance