AI, China, Russia, and the Global Order: Technological, Political, Global, and Creative Perspectives
Abstract
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and big data promise to help reshape the global order. For decades, most political observers believed that liberal democracy offered the only plausible future pathways for big, industrially sophisticated countries to make their citizens rich. Now, by allowing governments to monitor, understand, and control their citizens far more effectively than ever before, AI offers a plausible way for big, economically advanced countries to make their citizens rich while maintaining control over themthe first since the end of the Cold War. That may help fuel and shape renewed international competition between types of political regimes that are all becoming more digital. Just as competition between liberal democratic, fascist, and communist social systems defined much of the twentieth century, how may the struggle between digital liberal democracy and digital authoritarianism define and shape the twenty-first? The technical nature of AIs new advances particularly well suits all-encompassing surveillance; and as a consequence authoritarianism. New forms of authoritarianism arose with previous waves of global authoritarian expansion: fascism in the 1920s or bureaucratic authoritarianism in the 1960s. China has begun constructing core components of a digital authoritarian state. Americas liberal democratic political regime is turning digital, and so too is Russias hybrid political regime that lies between democracy and authoritarianism. Swing states from Asia to Africa, Europe and Latin America must manage their own political regimes within the context of this global competition. Several like-minded countries have begun to buy or emulate Chinese systems. Russian techniques are diffusing. To be sure, competing models for domestic regimes must be seen within the broader strategic contextrelative military or economic power also matter deeplybut as in the twentieth century it will likely prove a crucial dimension.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2018
- Accession Number
- AD1066673
Entities
People
- Benjamin A. Chang
- Chris C. Demchak
- Eleonore Pauwels
- Elsa Kania
- Herbert Lin
- Jaclyn Kerr
- James A. Lewis
- Jeffrey Ding
- Jennifer Snow
- Kacie Miura
- Laura Steckman
- Lora Saalman
- Lydia Kostopoulos
- Martin Libicki
- Natasha E. Bajema
- Rachel E. Odell
- Regina Joseph
- Roger Morgus
- Rogier Creemers
- Samantha N. Hoffman
- Samuel Bendett
- Sarah W. Denton
- Shazeda Ahmed
- Valentin Weber
Organizations
- The Neurosciences Institute