In 2025, there will be a sea change 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.
The post-ChatGPT years in AI discourse could be characterized as somewhere between a gold rush and a moral panic. In 2023, even as there were record investments in AI, technology 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, while others have compared AI to “nuclear war” and a “pandemic.”
This has understandably clouded the judgment of political leaders, pushing the geopolitical debate over AI into worrying areas. At the AI & Geopolitics Project, my research organization at the University of Cambridge, our analysis clearly shows the growing trend toward AI nationalism.
In 2017, for example, President Xi Jinping announced plans to make China an AI superpower by 2030. The Chinese “Next-generation AI development plan” aimed for the country to reach a “world-leading level” in AI innovation by 2025 and become a major center of AI innovation by 2030.
The CHIPs and Science Act of 2022 – a US ban on semiconductor exports – was a direct response to this situation, designed to advantage US domestic AI capabilities and restrict China. In 2024, following an executive order signed by President Biden, the US Treasury Department also issued draft rules to prohibit or restrict investments in artificial intelligence in China.
AI nationalism presents AI as a battle to be won rather than an opportunity to be exploited. Those who favor this approach, however, would do well to draw deeper lessons from the Cold War, beyond the notion of an arms race. At that time, the United States, while striving to become the most technologically advanced nation, successfully used politics, diplomacy, and statecraft to create a positive and ambitious vision for space exploration . Successive US governments also managed to gain UN support for a treaty protecting space from nuclearization, specifying that no nation could colonize the Moon and guaranteeing that space was “the province of all of humanity.”
This same political leadership is lacking in AI. In 2025, however, we will begin to see a return in the direction of cooperation and diplomacy.
The AI Summit in France in 2025 is part of this evolution. President Macron is already reframing his event away from a strict “security” framework for AI risks and toward one that, in his words, focuses on “solutions and more pragmatic standards. In a virtual speech to the Seoul summit, the French president made clear that he intends to address a much broader range of policy issues, including how to ensure that society truly benefits from AI.
The UN, recognizing the exclusion of some countries from the debate around AI, also published its own plans in 2024 for a more collaborative global approach.
Even the United States and China have started to engage attempt at diplomacyestablishing a bilateral consultation channel on AI in 2024. While the impact of these initiatives remains uncertain, they make clear that in 2025, the world’s AI superpowers will likely pursue diplomacy rather than nationalism.
