It’s time to move beyond AI nationalism

In 2025, there will be a course correction in artificial intelligence and geopolitics, as world leaders increasingly realize that their national interests are best served by the promise of a more positive and cooperative future.

The post-ChatGPT years can be described in AI discourse as somewhere between a gold rush and a moral panic. In 2023, at the same time as there was record investment in AI, technology experts, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, published an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, while Others have compared AI to “nuclear war” and a “pandemic.”

This has clouded the judgment of political leaders, pushing geopolitical conversations around AI into some troubling places. At the Artificial Intelligence and Geopolitics Project, my research organization at the University of Cambridge, our analysis clearly shows the growing trend towards AI nationalism.

In 2017, for example, President Xi Jinping announced plans for China to become an AI superpower by 2030.A plan to develop the new generation of artificial intelligenceThe country aims to reach a “world-leading level” in AI innovation by 2025 and become a major AI innovation center by 2030.

The Chips and Science Act of 2022 – a law imposed by the US on semiconductor exports – was a direct response to this, designed to benefit domestic AI capabilities in the US and downsize China. In 2024, following an executive order signed by President Biden, the US Treasury Department also published draft rules to ban or restrict investments in artificial intelligence in China.

AI nationalism portrays AI as a battle to be won, not an opportunity to be exploited. But those who favor this approach would do well to learn deeper lessons from the Cold War that go beyond the idea of ​​an arms race. At that time, the United States, while striving to become the most technologically advanced nation, was able to use politics, diplomacy, and statecraft to create a positive and ambitious vision for space exploration. Successive US governments were also able to obtain support at the United Nations for a treaty that protects space from nuclear weapons, stipulates that no country may colonize the moon, and guarantees that space is “the right of all humanity.”

The same political leadership has been missing in AI. But in 2025, we will begin to see a shift again in the direction of cooperation and diplomacy.

The AI ​​Summit in France in 2025 will be part of this transformation. President Macron has already begun to reframe his event away from a strict “safety” framework for AI risks, and toward one that focuses, as he puts it, on more realistic “solutions and standards.” In a virtual speech to the Seoul summit, the French president made clear that he intends to address a much broader range of policy issues, including how to ensure society actually benefits from artificial intelligence.

The United Nations, realizing the exclusion of some countries from the discussion on artificial intelligence, also in 2024 issued its own plans aimed at a more cooperative global approach.

Even the United States and China are starting to get involved in this Temporary diplomacyBy establishing a bilateral consultation channel on AI in 2024. Although the impact of these initiatives remains uncertain, they clearly indicate that in 2025, the world’s AI superpowers are likely to pursue diplomacy rather than nationalism. .