Compromise in Multilateral Negotiations and the Global Regulation of Artificial Intelligence

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how UNESCO's global AI ethics framework was negotiated and adopted through complex multilateral diplomacy, highlighting mechanisms that enabled compromise among diverse member states.

Contribution

It introduces a sociological analysis of multilateral negotiations, identifying structural normative hybridity and situated normative ambiguity as key mechanisms for reaching consensus.

Findings

Global AI regulation achieved despite diverse national interests.

Negotiation mechanisms linked macro-normative structures with local debates.

Compromise was facilitated by normative hybridity and ambiguity.

Abstract

As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies spread worldwide, international discussions have increasingly focused on their consequences for democracy, human rights, fundamental freedoms, security, and economic and social development. In this context, UNESCO's Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, adopted in November 2021, has emerged as the first global normative framework for AI development and deployment. The intense negotiations of every detail of the document brought forth numerous controversies among UNESCO member states. Drawing on a unique set of primary sources, including written positions and recorded deliberations, this paper explains the achievement of global compromise on AI regulation despite the multiplicity of UNESCO member-state positions representing a variety of liberal and sovereignist preferences. Building upon Boltanski's pragmatic sociology, it conceptualises the practice of multilateral negotiations and attributes the multilateral compromise to two embedded therein mechanisms: Structural normative hybridity and situated normative ambiguity allowed to accomplish a compromise by linking macro-normative structures with situated debates of multilateral negotiations.