The Chinese President XI Jing Ping announced the formation of a global body to govern Artificial Intelligence at the APEC Summit in Gyeongju, South Korea on November 1, 2025. This is a welcome move finally happening after spending three years waiting in the queue since the release of Chat GPT in November 2022.
A gap in the world stage that no nation wanted to occupy for fear of being seen as stifling innovation, losing out on economic growth, at cross purposes to the desire for global domination, advancing deterrence and better defence capabilities. A gap that remained supported on the foundation of plentiful venture capital funds driving sky high valuations of AI companies without commensurate cashflow or profits. A gap now occupied by China leading the world in the right direction, a gap which the US has chosen not to capitalize on to their own detriment.
This global leadership move by China is poised perfectly in the interest of all nations. Other nations should choose to follow these sensible steps for AI governance. It is in every nation’s interest to govern AI.
Why should nations sign up to this initiative?
The capabilities of AI are hyped up unrealistically. Today, AI lacks important criterion like understanding in the human format, fundamental intelligence, stable memory, reliability and robustness to take care of most human functions. The good that AI can do is known to many. The real harm from AI is rarely ever heard.
The shocking lack of engineering understanding of neural networks leads to unexplainable harmful AI tendencies such as hallucinations, deception, Machiavellianism, power grabbing and more.
The unchecked progress of AI leads to loss of control with power flowing from human beings to AI agents and AI systems. There are insufficient regulations against political manipulation through social media, fake news, deepfakes, privacy intrusions, violations of intellectual property and data rights, human rights and ethics, data hogging by the big players, individual modelling, stealing of personal data and AI based impersonation.
In India, the Supreme Court has taken suo-moto cognizance of “Digital Arrest” a technology-based scam which has led to loss of nearly Rs 3000 crores. Marks and Spencer a global retail chain suffered a cyberattack which cost the group around £300 million wiping off its six months profit.
The exponentially rising processing power of chips and parallel processing capability driven by AI is creating another real danger. At today’s Computing FLOPS, our 256 bit encryption can be brute forced in 513.4 mn years. Fast forward to 2052 and as per predicted FLOPS in that year, it can be brute forced in slightly more than 1 sec. With quantum computing (the Willow chip from Google) and AI joining hands this can be fast forwarded; a recipe for disaster where soon human beings maybe locked out of our own financial, banking and other critical systems and networks by AI. An age when global networks of AI agents can communicate in secret on their own networks which humans cannot penetrate.
Data Center and AI infrastructure investments in the US this year is $400 bn plus. Microsoft has planned roughly $80B, Open AI contract with Amazon Web Services for $38 Bn and more. On 6th November 2025, Tesla has announced a Terafab factory for manufacturing chips costing dozens of billions of dollars since it says even TMSC will not be able to meet the demand for chips for its cars and robots. AI just does not have the revenues or cash flows which can sustain this level of investments. The AI balloon is set to drift down to earth.
The business model pushed by Sam Altman and the big MNCs in the case of AI is reminiscent of Amazon’s business model which has always pursued growth over profits and shareholder returns. AI industry has gone many steps further by driving a valuation bubble with a lack of fundamental applications, cash flows and profits.
The catastrophic danger posed by autonomous weapons systems and AI driven weapon systems is yet another reason that calls for regulation.
At the receiving end of these harms are all of us, professionals, employees and citizens who can lose their livelihood through Intellectual Property theft, AI stealing their sources of income, job displacement and cybertheft.
What are the chances of this initiative working?
It is disappointing that the UN and its partner agencies like GPAI, ITU, the WEF, the Davos annual conferences have effectively downplayed the true reasons for the need for global governance of AI while pandering to the commercial and superpower driven AI narratives.
Going with flow is not the nature of leaders. If the mandate of the UN is to be a leader and the place where the world’s nations can gather to discuss common problems to find shared solutions for a safer world, then the UN has failed by being ineffective in the area of AI governance.
Any such global AI initiative must ideally come under the auspices of the UN. It was set up in the 20th century with great effort after learning hard lessons collectively as humanity. The UN is the only body which has complete global national representation.
The current US administration has chosen to override the calls for a safety, security and human centric approach for AI mandated by the Biden administration in October 2023. It has chosen to pursue a policy based on innovation at all costs even with lack of understanding, threat to safety and security and lack of business justification. This shows the depths to which polarization and world domination has taken roots since World War II.
When one of the top two nations has opted out of a cooperative global effort to tailor AI for safety, security and the benefit of all, global success is not assured. This does not mean that regional AI governance initiatives within APEC and other bodies should not be pursued. China’s call for a global body to govern Artificial Intelligence is a good start. Perhaps the UN will see the good sense and work harder to get AI governance under its umbrella.
Conclusion
Progress and change are driven by leaders desiring domination whether they are politicians, industrialists or entrepreneurs. Throughout history, there are cases where overreach by the leader has seen failure at the hands of forces of balance, retribution and retaliation.
AI is another such case in the making, the only difference being that failure can be apocalyptic for us. AI’s harmful impacts will be severe due to its pervasive nature and direct impact on humans in a way that makes us progressively powerless, redundant and replaceable. Where AI is concerned, wise leaders will not play brinkmanship.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are personal opinions and futuristic thoughts of the author. No comment or opinion expressed in this article is made with any intent to discredit, malign, cause damage, loss to or criticize or in any other way disadvantage any person, company, governments or global and regional agencies.