The United States, Europe and China have all made progress in important aspects of AI governance: The EU has put into force its Artificial Intelligence Act, the U.S. administration has issued executive orders on AI, and China, too, has established its own AI laws and regulations. These advances were made according to each actor’s own criteria and governance models.

For its part, it is important to highlight the Shanghai Declaration on Global AI Governance, produced on July 4, 2024, within the framework of the World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance. The Shanghai Declaration and the recent United Nations resolution on AI capacity-building are very important because they express the concerns of developing countries and aim to reduce the gap between the Global South and the Global North.

I believe there are three critical issues in global AI governance: Geopolitical fragmentation and lack of cooperation are detrimental to true democratic global governance; the gap between countries that are developing their own AI governance and those that are not can be a problem for national sovereignty and can lead to the exclusion of a large part of the world’s countries from the development of fundamental governance rules; the monopoly of AI by large private corporations and their decisive role in determining the rules of the game can generate undemocratic ecosystems and favor large monopolistic capital over workers in the current technological revolution, concentrating profits in the hands of a few.

Additionally, the main challenges for the Global South in terms of global AI governance include developing its own capabilities to actively participate in the ongoing technological revolution and break the center-periphery dynamic, increasing levels of cooperation to build governance criteria and principles from the Global South, and unifying the Global South in a common policy to have greater weight in global definitions.

The outlook for global AI governance is not very encouraging—at least not in the immediate future. Global fragmentation is likely to continue, and it is also likely that the interests of the geopolitical West in dominating AI as a strategic technology of the current industrial revolution in order to impose its hegemony will lead to greater dispute with emerging poles, to the detriment of global cooperation. Furthermore, in Latin America and the Caribbean, the United States’ desire to maintain hegemony in the Western Hemisphere at all costs is creating resistance against autonomous developments in this area and against cooperation with other emerging or developing countries.

In the process of building global AI governance, it is essential that the perspectives of developing countries are strengthened in this process, with the aim of not widening the technological gap,?exacerbating the center-periphery dynamic and excluding the majority of humanity from the construction of the principles and norms of governance of a key technology in the present and in the future.

The United Nations, as a democratic global forum representing all countries in the development of common criteria for global AI governance, could play a key role in combating geopolitical fragmentation and building a form of governance that takes into account the interests of developing countries. It is also key to producing legislation in line with the majority interests of the world’s population, aimed at the common good.

It is essential to deepen cooperation in research, development and innovation and the joint development of this key technology for the present and future of humanity, especially Global South countries. On that basis, it is necessary for the Global South to have greater influence in the development of criteria and standards for global AI governance. Key issues in this regard include data management, protection of national sovereignty, reduction of the technological divide, improvement of the population’s wellbeing, distribution of benefits and control of large private monopolies.

The author is a research fellow at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina.