Only inclusion of China into the world order solves every global threat---its cooperate or die

We are facing an ever-growing gap between the phenomenal acceleration of technology and of connectivity, and the human capacity to manage these trends. The gap is well-documented in the fields of finance, climate change, pandemics and nuclear risks. But the contrast between the exponential growth of disruptive technology and the lacklustre supply of governance mechanisms is starkest in the fields of digital governance and artificial intelligence (AI).

That gap becomes existential when we consider the likely future development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) (Ord 2020) or superintelligence (Bostrom 2015) that can be misaligned with human values or even the goal of ensuring the continuity of human existence. This question of the governance of life with AI may be the most essential question of our time (Tegmark 2017), but you would not know it from the current output of global governance in this field. Summarizing the judgement of many scientists in the field, Toby Ord argues that unaligned AGI is actually the number-one global existential risk for humanity, with a 10 percent chance of human extinction within 100 years. The prophesized existential threats posed by extreme and accelerated technological advancement and expansion have never been as close to reality as they are now. As noted by Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman (2021) in a recent conversation, the task of taming and governing the digital/AI revolution is daunting. Humanity may have no slack for a mistake this time around, given the existential consequences of such a mistake.

Today, we already benefit from tremendous digital or AI innovations in e-commerce, social media and communication, home management, work, health care, education, transportation, and entertainment (West and Allen 2020). We can foresee that AI-driven algorithms may soon be able to correct human judgement flaws (or noise) caused by fatigue, irregularity, emotions and other weaknesses, afflictions that can generate variation in decisions by up to 50 percent (Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein 2021). Within two decades, we can envisage a world with generalized deep learning and virtual reality, computer vision, contactless love, fully autonomous vehicles in most advanced and emerging economies, autonomous weapons in militaries and a dream of plenitude (Lee and Chen 2021).

Yet, today, we witness tremendous havoc created by the explosion of social anger, exacerbated by sophisticated social media algorithms, deep polarization, the return of tribal politics, the loss of agreed truths and the spread of misinformation and dangerous conspiracies, the loss of privacy, the rise of massive and uber-powerful tech companies, and massive job displacement and inequality (Bartlett 2018). Influence operations by foreign states have also amplified such social anger and polarization in many democracies, adding a degree of external threat and urgency. We also live with a world of security-driven digital decoupling between the United States and China (Ma 2021). In other words, the digital revolution is moving faster than the human capacity to cope with it, embed it within a public good-oriented framework and steer its disruptive power toward a non-destructive direction.

The problem is visible at the national level but particularly salient at the global level. Digital/data governance is fragmenting among at least four poles: a US model with maximum innovation and limited regulation; an EU model with a strong regulatory balance; an India model with an emphasis on digital sovereignty and infant industry protection (applicable to other developing countries); and a Chinese model with both rapid innovation, strong state control and surveillance. Our global governance capacity is affected by multiple splits: a US-EU split over privacy, tax and anti-monopoly regulations; an India-West split over data ownership and first-mover advantage; and, worst of all, a potential digital cold war between the United States (and its allies) and China. In response to this dire need for governance, Rohinton P. Medhora and Taylor Owen (2020) have proposed a need for a new fundamental effort at coordinated governance — or a “digital Bretton Woods.” While fundamental international conditions and global distribution of power today differ drastically from the Bretton Woods era, a high-stake and fragmented digital world is in dire need of such renewed cooperative spirit.

Recognizing the gap in digital governance, we ask the following questions: What is the scale of the gap in governance relative to requirements needed to keep the digital economy afloat? And what could be a pathway forward in the context of the growing securitization and increasing divides?

It is urgent to raise a sense of awareness, mobilize all social and public actors around this urgent dilemma and catalyze a multi-level effort to address this conundrum. We argue that no global, regional or national institution alone will be able to deliver the right governance capacity. Instead, we recommend a highly reactive, innovative and competitive model of networked governance that operates at multiple levels with key nodes and catalysts.

Governance innovation must keep pace with technological innovation. Given how far the digital cold war has already proceeded and the currently low capacity to cooperate between the United States and China, part of the solution will need to involve clubs and alliances of countries and non-state actors. At the same time, some level of global coordination and basic rules for global co-existence are crucial for success in managing this existential threat. The Group of Twenty (G20) is one critical venue for such work, even though it has not delivered so far.