AI, Global Governance, and Digital Sovereignty

TL;DR

This paper explores how AI influences global governance and digital sovereignty, highlighting the complex power dynamics between states, corporations, and AI infrastructures in international affairs.

Contribution

It introduces a taxonomy of AI payoffs for power and analyzes how digital sovereignty is implicated in AI-driven global governance from institutional and practice perspectives.

Findings

AI impacts violence, markets, and rights through instrumental, structural, and discursive power.

States seek control and establish competence over AI infrastructures, shaping sovereignty.

AI embeds in governance, fostering public-private cooperation and contestation.

Abstract

This essay examines how Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are becoming more integral to international affairs by affecting how global governors exert power and pursue digital sovereignty. We first introduce a taxonomy of multifaceted AI payoffs for governments and corporations related to instrumental, structural, and discursive power in the domains of violence, markets, and rights. We next leverage different institutional and practice perspectives on sovereignty to assess how digital sovereignty is variously implicated in AI-empowered global governance. States both seek sovereign control over AI infrastructures in the institutional approach, while establishing sovereign competence through AI infrastructures in the practice approach. Overall, we present the digital sovereignty stakes of AI as related to entanglements of public and private power. Rather than foreseeing technology companies as replacing states, we argue that AI systems will embed in global governance to create dueling dynamics of public/private cooperation and contestation. We conclude with sketching future directions for IR research on AI and global governance.