By Liu Chen, Beijing Foreign Studies University
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is set to create significant value across sectors, and global economy has an opportunity to achieve leapfrog development on this transformative technology. McKinsey estimates that gen AI could add $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion to the global economy annually.
AI is already transforming our world but its power has posed global concerns. The challenges faced by States, companies and civil society in scaling AI opportunity are focused on implications of AI technologies for human rights. With regard to the international impact, the World Economic Forum in its The Global Risks Report 2021 sounded the alarm on growing digital divides and technology adoption as one of the five core risks (a fractured future, youth in an age of lost opportunity, middle power morass, and imperfect markets) to building a just world and a sustainable planet.
A business-as-usual trajectory will fundamentally result in an uncertain future, in which AI is capable of replacing millions of jobs today, conducting autonomous cyberattacks, and exceeding human abilities across many domains. The alternative path, which deploys global guardrails to align AI governance efforts around the world, reinforce the interoperability and coordination in compliance with countries frameworks and international policy standards, prevent misuses, and model on best practices. The benefits seen in this alternate pathway could result in the future of AI for the greater good——transparency, diversity, openness, inclusivity, democratic accessibility, and equally important is the protection and promotion of human rights, in particular, the leave-no-one-behind principle.
It is time to agree and implement deeper, more structural change to build the foundation to achieve open, fair, inclusive, transparent, and efficient global AI governance. There are several good practices including China’s Global AI Governance Initiative (2023), the UN’s The Global Digital Compact on AI governance (2024), the African Union’s Continental AI Strategy (2024), and Paris AI Summit’s Inclusive and Sustainable AI for People and the Planet (2025), and so on. In addition, more and more platforms for global dialogues on AI governance have been established, such as the Global Forum on the Ethics of AI hosted by UNESCO, the AI for Good Global Summit hosted by World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO), and World AI Conference hosted by China, and so forth.
Overall, these official statements, initiatives, or strategies all seek to establish effective and workable frameworks for global AI governance. They hold the potentials to reverse the trend of unimplemented commitments to extending the benefits of AI to everyone, and everywhere. From a global outlook, they help more countries join the international cooperation and coordination on development and deployment of AI. Their scopes cover the sectors essential to an effective global AI governance, such as the missions, visions, mandates, norms, and key features of the frameworks. These policies bring together a diverse range of stakeholders, including governments, the private sector, civil society, and academic community that ensure an equity-driven approach. In so doing, they begin to address the gaps in governance, institutional changes, and equity, aiming to create long-term global solutions through cooperation and coordination across the world. Under the principles, a global AI ecosystem could be fostered which embraces inclusivity, transparency, and shared growth.
There are limitations of a magnitude that act barriers to the establishment and implementation of global AI governance, such as the lack of more detailed plans, specific initiatives, adequate incentives to motivate stakeholders in behavior change, and particularly, cooperative measures or agreements among governments and stakeholders, and so on. Despite these weaknesses, building global AI governance under the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits is an important step in the right direction, at right time.
Presently, AI technology continues to move rapidly in scale and extent while global governance moves at another——when technology outpaces institution, uncertainty will be unavoidable. It identifies the urgent necessity of building a framework for global AI governance as the right response to the unpredictable risks and complicated challenges brought about by the development of AI. China has called for more efforts to promote the alignment and coordination of development strategies, governance rules, and technical standards among all parties, and to form a global governance framework and standards with extensive consensus. The framework must uphold the principles of transparency, inclusivity, shared growth, and shared future. With the world more attuned to AI, there is an opportunity to leverage attention and find more effective ways to build global AI governance. Only together can we human beings leverage cooperation and coordination, and realize a better world.
Liu Chen, professor of International Development and International Communication, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Mason Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School, and author of The Chinese Story in Global Order (Springer, 2023)
