How the U.N. Plans to Shape the Future of AI

Levels of international cooperation between countries with the aim of managing dangerous technologies is at a “30-year low,” says Bill Drexel, an associate fellow at military affairs think tank the Center for a New American Security. “Trying to eke out a really meaningful agreement from that baseline with a technology that's still having its risks and advantages determined seems like a super tall order.”

Drexel thinks it may take a serious AI-related incident to generate the political will required to form a substantial agreement between countries. In the meantime, he says, it could be prudent to set up an international body, whether through the U.N., or between a smaller multilateral or bilateral group, that imposes very minimally on the participants, which could be used as a foundation for more material cooperation if political will arises.

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International cooperation is “really clunky, slow and generally inefficient,” says Drexel. Instead, it may be possible to “come up with bilateral or more limited multilateral fora to try to govern [advanced AI systems] and even to scale with the expansion of companies that might be able to train frontier models.”

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