Abstract: The world is going through a period of great change, some of it unleashed by AI. The silver lining in the cloud is that AI itself can become a neutral, more amiable global negotiating platform to bring about unification of nations. Global standards for implementing Human Centric AI will itself reduce tensions significantly.
The need for human-centricity of AI has just got more pressing. While my book and writings on AI have always been motivated by developing “Human-centricity” for AI, the emerging geo-political situation has suddenly been vitiated, exponentially increasing the urgent need to ensure that AI is indeed designed, developed and regulated to achieve human centricity.
There is a global struggle between the world’s two leading economies to build axes of powers around themselves. At the Munich Security conference, General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine announced that the EU and Ukraine will not be part of the peace discussions with Russia to be held in Saudi Arabia. By keeping the EU and Ukraine out of the peace negotiations with Russia, the US achieves many ends. The first is enticing Russia to split the China-Russia axis. The second is stopping the war. The third and most important is bolstering the US’s superpower status and adding leverage to its capabilities to counter China’s emergence as a superpower. The fourth win for America can be if Trump succeeds in negotiating for a part the vast mineral resources of Ukraine when the war ends. In the process, the EU has been alienated and must fend for itself, creating yet another discontent bloc. The citizens of nations who have voted for their leaders seem to be of no concern.
The direction emerging from the above discussion indicates that after 80 years the world is moving closer to a major global two axis war rather than locally restricted conflicts.
The tariff war that has been kicked off can only result in inflation all around and greater suffering for the people. The principle of producing efficiently for market consumption has been thrown to the winds due to the emergence of the need for nations to be self-sufficient. It is the people and the planet that will bear the brunt of these decisions.
There are a host of other tensions such as the Panama Canal imbroglio, Greenland, walls to stop illegals immigrants and the emergence of support for right wing extremism. Cheap VC money, technology hype over AI and quarter on quarter corporate profiteering at the unmeasured and hidden cost to people. The harms that unregulated AI can do on people has been well documented by many (Elon Musk, Geoffrey Hinton, Andrew Yang among others) and on this web-site. These factors exacerbate an extremely dangerous overall crisis that the world is facing today. A crisis can easily escalate and lead to large scale extinction of people and wanton destruction of our planet.
The fortunate and most noteworthy point in the present moment is that AI holds the key to restrain or magnify the suffering of the people. There is an unique and timely opportunity here for the world to come together to prevent AI technology from providing the leverage to do greater harm. The tremendous power of this AI leverage must not be discounted. If we agree to design human centric AI systems globally, the capability to inflict harm is reduced exponentially due the all-pervasive nature of AI.
The world is no longer an entity with a population of 1.8 billion (as in 1914) or 2 billion (as in 1939). We are 8.2 billion people today in 2025. The amount of human suffering that can be inflicted has multiplied more than four times discounting the increased destructive power of today’s weapons. The large-scale destruction, deprivation and human suffering that can be inflicted by designing AI systems in autonomous weapon systems and other technologies of war need to be restricted with agreements like the 1969 SALT I and SALT II treaties and the Cold War strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) through the United Nations.
Fundamental progress towards peaceful co-existence can be achieved by a globally accepted standard for human centric AI design, development by companies and linked regulation of AI. The only tool that can straddle across this entire space to achieve our desired peaceful coexistence is human centric AI. It can affect every one of the areas that I have mentioned above positively or negatively. This single great lever is a blessing that we possess. It may be the only universal lever that can be employed to de-escalate global tensions today. So let us use it wisely by building human centric AI systems globally.