Regulation is the first idea that crosses minds when technology and global governance are joined. Having been at the top of the United Nations during efforts to regulate the internet, Mark describes the mixture of governmental motives — some intended to protect freedom, others to suppress it — that are at play in debates about the global regulation of technology and information.
Yet as important as how we set global standards for AI is its direct impact on how we govern ourselves. The very processes of international governance, development and security are going to be transformed. At its humblest, the laborious reporting and measuring of global conditions that forms so much of the UN’s day-to-day work will be changed by AI. At the more strategic heights, whole models of how countries develop and modernise will be upended as AI displaces human work — with consequences for political stability that confound early predictions.
Twenty-five years ago on a stage in Seattle, Mark and Bill Gates debated the likely impact of computers on African development. Strangely, Mark championed them but Gates thought they were a distraction. Both were arguably wrong — the cellphone was the real agent of change. He brings that same humility and sense of surprise to forecasting what AI will actually mean.
And at its most threatening, technology is changing security. Drones are undermining old powers and may be on the verge of empowering non-state actors the world over. As someone who has served the UN in war zones and been an architect of the international system’s most ambitious development initiatives, his account of how technology will impact the world has the authenticity of deep experience — and the modesty of someone who has never stopped being surprised.