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In 2025, there will be a development of education in AI and geopolitics, when the leaders of the world understand that the interests of their country are better served through the promise of a better and more united future.
The post-ChatGPT years in the context of AI can be characterized as somewhere between a gold rush and a moral panic. In 2023, at the same time as there was a history of investment in AI, technologists, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, published an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the study of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, while others compared AI to “nuclear war” and “pandemic”.
This has clouded the judgment of political leaders, and pushed the AI debate into some murky territory. At the AI & Geopolitics Project, my research organization at the University of Cambridge, our analysis clearly shows how people are growing into the world of AI.
For example, in 2017, President Xi Jinping announced that China will become an AI superpower by 2030.New Generation AI Development Plan” the goal was for the country to reach the “world” of AI technology by 2025 and become an AI technology center by 2030.
The CHIPs and Science Act of 2022 – the ban on the US export of semiconductors – was a direct response to this, it was designed to take advantage of the AI capabilities of the US and limit China. In 2024, following an order signed by President Biden, the US Department of the Treasury also published regulations to restrict or ban Chinese intellectual property.
AI nationalism presents AI as a battle to be won, not an opportunity to be exploited. However, those who accept this approach would do well to learn more from the Cold War than the idea of an arms race. At that time, the United States, wanting to be the most technologically advanced nation, managed to use politics, diplomacy and statecraft to create a positive and ambitious vision for space exploration. Successive administrations of the United States were also supported by the UN for a treaty to protect space from nuclear weapons, stated that no country could control the moon, and affirmed that space is “the domain of all people.”
That political leadership has been lacking in AI. In 2025, however, we will begin to see a shift towards cooperation and dialogue.
The AI conference in France in 2025 will be part of this change. President Macron is already reshaping his event away from a “security” based on the risk of AI, and towards one that, in his words, focuses on “solutions and standards” of sustainability. Speaking at the Seoul Summit, the French president made it clear that he wants to tackle many challenges, including how to ensure that people benefit from AI.
The UN, recognizing the exclusion of other countries from the debate surrounding AI, released in 2024 its plans aimed at a global consensus.
Even the US and China have begun to participate formal diplomacyto establish a bilateral dialogue on AI in 2024. Although the results of these policies are not yet known, it is clear that, in 2025, the world’s major AI authorities will follow the national dialogue.
