It’s Time to Move Past AI Nationalism

In 2025, there will be a course correction in AI and geopolitics, as world leaders increasingly realize that their national interests are best served by committing to a more positive and cooperative future.

The post-ChatGPT years in AI discourse can be characterized as somewhere between a gold rush and a moral panic. In 2023, at a time of record investment in AI, tech experts, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, published an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on training AI systems stronger than GPT-4, while others called AI “nuclear war” and compared to an “epidemic”.

This has understandably clouded the judgment of political leaders, pushing the geopolitical conversation about AI into some uncomfortable places. At my research institute AI & Geopolitics Project at Cambridge University, our analysis clearly shows a growing trend towards AI nationalism.

In 2017, for example, President Xi Jinping announced plans for China to become an AI superpower by 2030. Chinese “New Generation AI Development PlanIt aims to reach a “world-leading level” of AI innovation by 2025 and become a major AI innovation center by 2030.

The CHIPs and Science Act of 2022 – a US ban on exporting semiconductors – was a direct response to this, designed to leverage US domestic AI capabilities and undercut China. In 2024, following an executive order signed by President Biden, the US Treasury Department also released draft regulations to ban or limit investment in artificial intelligence in China.

AI nationalism portrays AI as a battle to be won rather than an opportunity to exploit. Those who favor this approach, however, would do well to learn deeper lessons from the Cold War beyond the concept of an arms race. At that time, the United States, while becoming the most advanced technological nation, was able to use politics, diplomacy, and statecraft to create a positive and ambitious vision for space exploration. Successive US governments also managed to win support at the United Nations for a treaty protecting outer space from nuclearization, specifying that no nation could colonize the Moon and affirming that space was “the province of all mankind”.

That same political leadership is lacking in AI. In 2025, however, we will begin to see a shift toward cooperation and diplomacy.

The AI ​​Summit in France in 2025 will be part of this transition. President Macron is already moving his event away from a strict “security” framing of AI risks, and toward, in his words, more realistic “solutions and standards.” In a virtual speech at the Seoul summit, the French president made it clear that he wants to address broader policy issues, including how to ensure the benefits to society from AI.

The United Nations, recognizing the exclusion of some countries from the debate around AI, released its own plan in 2024 aimed at a more collaborative global approach.

Even the US and China are starting to join Temporary diplomacyEstablish a bilateral consultation channel on AI by 2024. While the impact of these initiatives is uncertain, they clearly indicate that, in 2025, the world’s AI superpowers will likely pursue diplomacy over nationalism.