By Javier Surasky-
One of the
debates that will most strongly shape the future of world order concerns
digital technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence. Consequently, the
form that international governance of these technologies takes will be a litmus
test for understanding current multilateralism's capacity to project itself
into the future.
While there
is no internationally agreed-upon definition of "digital
technologies," there is an understanding that their distinctive
characteristic is their binary processing format (zeros and ones), which
distinguishes them from analog technologies that use a method based on
continuous signals representing physical quantities, such as sound waves or
light intensity.
Consequently,
these are not necessarily novel technologies. The novelty lies in their current
place in people's daily lives and the speed at which they develop, making any
attempt to list digital technologies futile. Just as an indication, we can say
that your computer, the internet you access, the services you contract there,
and the artificial intelligence that helps you with your Google searches are
digital technologies, as are cellular telephony, 3D printing, and the Internet
of Things.
The
fundamental elements of digital technologies include hardware components (such
as microprocessors, sensors, and storage devices), software applications, and
network infrastructure that enable data exchange, management, and use.
As Castells
notes in his book "The Network Society: A cross-cultural Perspective in
the Digital Age" (2021, Oxford University Press), "digital
technologies have become the fundamental infrastructure of contemporary
societies, reconfiguring power dynamics both within and between nations."
As a result, they are creating new forms of power and vulnerabilities, which
Nye explained as early as 2011 in his work "The Future of Power"
(Public Affairs Press).
The
emergence and mass adoption of AI has increased the intensity of cooperation
opportunities and conflict risks that arise from pre-existing digital
technologies and the urgency of global agreements for their management.
In the
development field, access to digital technologies and control over them has
become a variable indicating current and future opportunities: those who fall
behind today on the digital highway will pay the consequences for decades, just
as happened with those who fell behind in the industrialization process.
Establishing shared global rules is both a requirement for the progress of
digital technologies and their management at the global level, the natural
space in which these technologies operate.
The ongoing
debates to establish global governance of digital technologies are taking place
within the framework of competition between the United States and China to lead
hardware and software markets that enable access to, use of, and progress in
AI, as is happening with chip manufacturing. The European Union emerges between
them as an actor that, by arriving first, sets regulatory directions. Academia
and the private sector share the leading experts on the subject, although the
latter has more significant financial resources. Civil society pushes to link
digital development to equity, justice, and environmentally sustainable use of
resources, among its main themes.
With these
actors at center stage, UN system organs such as UNESCO or the ITU work on
proposals and frameworks capable of giving direction and containment to digital
technologies. The topic has already become transversal to global and regional
multilateral institutions: the General Assembly has recently approved its first
two resolutions on AI, and the Secretary-General's vision for the future has
made digital technologies one of its key elements. Although somewhat forced in
form, the adoption of the Global
Digital Compact by the Summit of the Future is a milestone in the
governance of these technologies.
But what
are the G77's positions in this debate? Answering this question is critical
since the Group's 134 member states, which for years have received support and,
at least partially, coordinate their actions with China to such an extent that
reference to "G77+China" is now standard despite that country is not
a member of the Group, represent enough votes to reach the simple and qualified
majority required by the UN Charter for the adoption of a resolution by the
UNGA, which ultimately must approve the rules of this multilateral digital
governance to be constructed.
To identify
the G77's agenda on the issue, we analyzed the declarations from the Group's
annual foreign ministers meetings and the final documents from their summits
between 2016, the first time the Ministerial Declaration made
express mention of the topic, and 2024. In total, we have analyzed seven
declarations adopted at foreign ministers meetings and the final documents
adopted by G77 Heads of State and Government at the summit on "Current Development Challenges: the Role of Science,
Technology and Innovation" (Havana, 2023), and at the Third South Summit
(Kampala, 2024).
As
expected, the heterogeneity and institutional weaknesses that characterize G77
governance mean that the group has adopted positions that lack sufficient
concreteness to be actionable but do reflect agreements within the Group and,
therefore, can act as seeds for defining their own agenda for negotiations on
digital technologies.
To begin
with, we have an initial list of "important issues" for thinking
about digital cooperation introduced in paragraph 49 of the 2022 Ministerial Declaration: inclusive
digital economy, digital capacity development, access to digital networks and
digital connectivity, technology transfer, investment in digital
infrastructures, data protection, artificial intelligence, digital literacy;
fighting the use of information technology for criminal purposes, preventing
Internet fragmentation, fighting disinformation and misinformation, promoting
e-learning, and defining common digital principles.
In our
analysis, we found that, beyond this enumeration, it is possible to identify
ten critical elements for the G77 in their approach to digital technologies
governance: five of them are projections of the G77's "classic"
agenda to these technologies, while the remaining five show a more innovative
character.
Among those
we qualify as "traditional" are:
1. A main
concern linked to the group's most traditional agenda puts the digital divide
at its center, identified as an obstacle for developing countries to achieve
sustainable development.
2. The G77
unites behind the demand for more significant financing for developing digital
technologies and infrastructure, accompanied by technology transfer and
capacity building.
3.
Recognition of the central role of the United Nations in designing global
governance of digital technologies and promoting their effective arrival in
developing countries.
4. The
strong position of framing digital governance in global development agendas
adopted by the UN, currently the 2030 Agenda, and in current international law.
5. The
denunciation of the inequitable distribution of benefits generated by digital
technologies, their concentration in monopolies located in the developed world,
and the appropriation of traditional knowledge from "discoveries"
achieved through digital technologies. Alongside this, we see a voice favoring
supporting digital industrialization, including small and medium enterprises.
Among the
more innovative claims, we find:
1. Each
country's situation regarding digital technologies needs to be considered in
constructing a multidisciplinary measure of development beyond GDP.
2. A
growing consideration of digital technologies as a cross-cutting theme in the
international development agenda. This consensus changes in its degree of
intensity, weakening in the face of different connections that arise, losing
precision when referring to gender, and limiting itself to the issue of
remittances when addressing migrations. Although mention of the environmental
issue shows growth over time, it remains at an excessively broad level of
vagueness. The lowest point appears in the group's links between
digital technologies and human rights, which is practically non-existent.
3. The
Tunis Agenda and the Geneva Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action
complement the call to frame digital governance development in international
law concerning non-binding agreements. The Global Digital Compact
appears as a reference to which cautious approaches are seen, given that it had
not been adopted when the analyzed documents were approved and, as we already
know, it is not a document around which the G77 has been able to build
consensus.
4. Explicit
references to AI are almost non-existent, but we have seen how the G77 members
incorporate data alongside digital technologies in recent years. Advances
regarding paragraphs dedicated to data issues from one year to the next suggest
that actionable consensus is possible within the G77.
5. Very
specifically, open-source software, platforms, data, AI models, standards, and
content that can be freely used and adapted are mentioned as "digital
public goods."
Conversely,
some of the topics that appear as intensely divisive are:
1. The
inclusion of non-governmental actors in the global governance of digital
technologies.
2. The
relationship that this governance should have with human rights.
If the G77
is capable of articulating positions among its members and creating agreements
to defend their priorities jointly, it will be an unavoidable actor in
negotiations of the international framework for regulating digital
technologies.
Even with
all their power, the digital world's "giants" need the consumption,
data, and energy resources of G77 countries for the system to function, and
these countries should be clear about how far they are willing to go and what
they expect to receive in return. Later, it will be too late to complain.
