Jesse Woo
Heather Roff will lead a discussion of Jesse Woo‘s Toward a Comprehensive View of the Influence of Artificial Intelligence on International Affairs on Friday, April 12, at 4:45 p.m. at #werobot 2019.
This essay has two objectives. The first is to widen the lens on the influences of artificial intelligence (AI) in international affairs beyond the issues that have dominated discussions of this topic so far. Using a framework developed in the discipline of Science and Technology in International Affairs, it seeks to uncover or highlight areas that have not received adequate attention. This includes but is not limited to non-military uses of AI for diplomacy and the importance of cross-border data regimes. It will also pull out broad themes and issues that may be helpful for policy makers to consider as they work with AI in the international arena.
The second objective is to counter the narrative that strong privacy rules will inevitably hurt the U.S. in a race with China to develop AI. Recent legislative actions in the U.S. and Europe (the CLOUD Act and GDPR, respectively) have shown how domestic action can have significant extraterritorial effects on data policy.
Heather Roff
Rather than engage in a race to the bottom on privacy with China, States that value democracy, rule of law, and civil liberties should strive to create rules and norms that require those values in AI development and deployment. Doing so will hopefully play to the relative strengths of AI companies in those countries, and maybe even raise the bar for the industry worldwide.
