2025 will see a course correction in AI and geopolitics, as world leaders increasingly understand that their national interests are best served by the promise of a more positive and cooperative future.
The post-ChatGPT years in AI discourse can be characterized as somewhere between a gold rush and moral panic. In 2023, at the same time as record investments in AI were being made, tech experts including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak published an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on training AI systems more powerful than GPT 4. Others compared AI to a “nuclear war” and a “pandemic.”
This has understandably clouded the judgment of political leaders, taking the geopolitical conversation about AI to some troubling places. At the AI & Geopolitics Project, my research organization at the University of Cambridge, our analysis clearly shows the increasing trend towards AI nationalism.
For example, in 2017, President Xi Jinping announced plans for China to become an AI superpower by 2030. China’s ‘New Generation AI Development Plan’ aimed for the country to achieve a ‘world-leading level’ of AI innovation by 2025 and a major AI innovation center by 2030.
The CHIPs and Science Act of 2022 – a US ban on semiconductor exports – was a direct response to this, designed to benefit US domestic AI capabilities and curtail China. In 2024, following an executive order signed by President Biden, the US Treasury Department also published draft rules to ban or restrict artificial intelligence investments in China.
AI nationalism describes AI as a battle to be won, not an opportunity to be seized. However, those who advocate this approach would do well to learn deeper lessons from the Cold War that go beyond the idea of an arms race. At the time, the United States managed to become the most advanced technological nation, but managed to use politics, diplomacy and statesmanship to create a positive and ambitious vision of space exploration. Successive US administrations also managed to gain support at the UN for a treaty that protected space from nuclear energy, specified that no country could colonize the moon and ensured that space was “the domain of all mankind.”
The same political leadership was lacking in AI. However, in 2025 we will see a shift towards cooperation and diplomacy.
The AI Summit in France in 2025 will be part of this shift. President Macron is already reframing his event away from a strict “safety framework” of AI risks, and toward one that, in his words, focuses on the more pragmatic “solutions and standards.” In a virtual speech at the Seoul summit, the French president made clear that he plans to tackle a much broader range of policy issues, including how we can actually ensure that society benefits from AI.
Recognizing the exclusion of some countries from the AI debate, the UN also released its own plans in 2024 aimed at a more collaborative global approach.
Even the US and China have embarked on cautious diplomacy, setting up a bilateral consultation channel on AI in 2024. While the impact of these initiatives remains uncertain, they clearly indicate that the AI superpowers will likely pursue diplomacy over nationalism in 2025. .
