Artificial Intelligence: Driving and thriving on Global Disorder?

In recent years, claims about advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have also promised to revolutionise our worlds. Business, finance, healthcare, transportation, education, communication and translation, and customer service among others are under the magic spell of AI. It should come as no surprise, then, that the AI revolution has generated international competition among states to lead and benefit from the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution. The struggle for capitalising on the AI revolution among states, without a doubt, will change local and international politics.

The West led by the United States, United Kingdom and Europe intends to focus on liberal principles to set the AI standards for innovation and mitigate risks. The rest, mostly the Global South, is expected to see the benefits of these prudent norms, rules, and principles, if not acquiesce, to make the world a better place. After all, previous instances of disruptive technologies such as the invention of the telegraph and the telephone or nuclear weapons were managed through multilateral norms and institutions. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) shaped the norms for reliable and equitable use of communication systems globally and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) aimed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, promising disarmament whilst promoting peaceful uses of nuclear energy. But the struggle to capitalise on AI or tame it through globally acceptable norms and institutions will not follow past precedents, for the simple reason that the AI revolution is not only a driver of global disorder, but thrives on it.

Global disorder is a way to understand the complex and interlinked chaos and crisis unfolding in our world – everything everywhere all at once. There are endless wars across regions, rising economic inequalities, continuous racial and gendered injustices, predatory capitalism and its impact on the environment, resource wars in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, callous disregard of international rule of law and multilateral institutions across the political spectrum, societal discontents that feed into radical right-wing ideologies of violence and left-wing visions of revolution. Global disorder has also led to increasing interference of global elites and tech-billionaires in the everyday conduct, not just the broad contours, of politics. These episodes of crisis as individual instances are certainly not new. However, today we live in a world of polycrises. Our world is more interconnected than any time in the past spinning the crises faster. Policymakers cannot put a band aid on one crisis to resolve another as global disorder forms an intricate web of crises – each influencing and amplifying the other.

AI and Multilateralism

AI is a driver of global disorder in this interconnected world of crises. This is in part due to three reasons. Firstly, multilateral norms and institutions as a solution to stabilise the world from the problems of disruptive technologies are in a deep crisis. Many stakeholders in AI are led by players in the private sector. A group of influential members in this sector distrust multilateral global institutions and inveigh against attempts to manage AI as regulatory overreach that stifles innovation. They call for self-regulation instead. This convergence of distrust of multilateralism is deeply troubling.

For example, in handling the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s invasion of Gaza, both the Western and the Global South policy makers have challenged the liberal international order for addressing the scourge of war. Many policymakers turned to selfies, smart phones, and propaganda to feed the hungry social media machine with rhetoric about both these wars. More than anything, policymakers discarded an important “qualitative” element of multilateralism: non-discrimination. The AI world on social media thrived on this rejection of the non-discrimination principle. We find multiple AI curated videos and memes in YouTube, Tiktok, Facebook, and in other social media platforms where actors justify one war whilst rejecting or ignoring many others. Policymakers and the general public found ways to disparage the UN, avoided dialogue with their “enemies,” and lived in media driven realities of these wars. AI has changed the world from modus-vivendi to the world of irreconcilable differences.

In the past, multilateral institutions were avenues to articulate differences through dialogue. For example, US policymakers were wary of state-centric norms of ITU. They pursued power in diplomacy to regulate the internet through the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). They ensured governments took private sector interests seriously. Similarly, on the NPT, Indian policymakers disagreed on the norms of nuclear haves and have-nots, asserted sovereign equality among states, and developed an independent nuclear programme. India maintained its international non-proliferation credentials and in 2005 Indian policymakers cashed this cheque as a responsible nuclear weapons state against the geopolitical competition between the US and China. The influence of short-curated videos, pictures, and memes powered by AI and machine learning algorithms have changed such slow pursuit of interest within multilateral norms towards the desires for speedy solutions outside of it.

AI and Global Digital Divide

Secondly, the AI revolution rests on a larger digital divide between the West and the Global South states, and a sharper divide between and within Global South states. Claims about the promises of AI wrongly predict a fair distribution of its benefits to the world, when in fact advancements in AI perpetuate sharp divisions, hierarchy, and inequalities globally. Digital hierarchy takes many forms. For example, in the West there is a thicket of data protection and planned regulation of risks to privacy. Nevertheless, machine learning algorithms require supply of data. Many tech-companies work closely with governments and non-governmental organisations and focus on democracy to use data from the Global South. For example, “Microsoft partnered with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) in 2022 to expand a training curriculum for investigative journalists on the abuse of state resources in elections.” Piloted in 2022 in Tunisia and Serbia, the training is in high demand, “for safely investigating state abuse of public resources.”

This is not altruism, however. Even relatively strong states from the Global South, who are very much part of the liberal order such as India, Brazil, or South Africa, frequently face the dictates of tech-giants, which many see as digital colonialism. Similarly, the expertise and the capacity to manufacture advanced semiconductors are concentrated in the West, leading to a race for semiconductor supremacy. Specifically, investing in equal access to advanced semiconductors or universal data protection is antithetical to the AI revolution. China has already sensed a geopolitical struggle in this arena and has its own AI plans that are distinct from the West. Furthermore, critical minerals and rare earth in Africa and Latin America power AI machines. Increasingly assertive or even democratic political actors in this part of the world saddles easy access to these resources. Possibly worst of all, many AI stakeholders find struggles in “free market” is better than a regulated supply of these resources. Like a wolf watching over a henhouse, many companies have made promises about voluntary commitments such as safety tests, information sharing, or robust reporting mechanisms to manage risks posed by AI. The future of global disorder lies in how these promises and commitments unfold in world politics.

AI and Power Politics

Finally, exalted claims of the AI revolution hide the novel power politics that is part of any technological advancements in the world. With the relative decline of the West, albeit with a militarily powerful United States, and the shift in the bargaining leverage of many other states in the lower rungs of international hierarchy, we are moving from the age of great power geopolitics to widespread power politics of all actors. Increasingly power politics on technology resort to technology for influence. Ambitious policymakers will aim to use AI technology global influence detached from the realities of inequalities in an unequal world. Hyper surveillance, return to techno-nationalism, silencing dissent, relying on technocratic solutions, and a lofty imagination of AI driven warfare will augment global disorder.

This article was originally published by The Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) as part of a collaborative mini-series with City St George's, University of London on the Drivers of Global Disorder Today. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and may not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

The author is Dr Sasikumar “Sashi” Sundaram, a Senior Lecturer in Foreign Policy and Security at City St George’s, where he directs the Cluster for Global Disorder Studies, He is the Vice Chair of the Global South Caucus of the International Studies Association (ISA).

Sashi's main research interests lie in International Relations Theory, Rhetorical Power Politics, non-Western political thought, Status and Reputation concerns of Global South states, and foreign and Security Policies of India, Brazil, and China.