When I was thinking about how important this argument is, I thought that I still expect any generically influential international body to be able to have a lot of influence if it wants to and is seen as being a productive party to negotiations. What do you think? Maybe there are similar situations today where parties who don’t have much relevant economic power can influence negotiations by showing interest and ability to contribute to finding better solutions?
Though this would only hold in a cooperative atmosphere I suppose… would also be interesting how cooperative we expect the atmosphere of international politics around AI to be in the coming years and decades.
Interesting—that seems to converge towards the discussion on liberalism vs realism atmosphere above. On your specific point, if “productive party” = “party able/motivated to contribute to finding better solutions”, I would agree. In political negotiations at many level, from my limited experience there is this odd phenomenon about the relevance of expertise/motivation: expertise/motivation doesn’t matter if everyone has roughly the same amount, but then matters significantly as soon as a subset of parties are having a lot of it (because motivation c an be converted into further expertise or proactive control of the negotiations procedure such as sending reminders to comment to other parties, etc.).
I have observed that phenomenon between nations (e.g. economically small Estonia mattering much more on e-government or digital discussions than you would expect) and between policymakers (e.g. for multiple dossiers, the opinion of the Member of European Parliament (MEP) or diplomat that cares/knows most about the issue matters more and is more respected by other MEPs/diplomats).
I imagine low international trust environments would make this difficult though (as knowledge/expertise can be manipulated for one’s own interest)
Yes, that was also what I intended to communicate with “productive party”. Thanks for the response and especially the examples about Estonia and expert parliamentarians.
A related thought: the more that parties are able to productively contribute to discussions, the more productive the discussions will be and feel, and the more likely a cooperative atmosphere can be maintained. Might be another reason why increasing AI governance expertise of the EU could be really helpful, as it seems very likely to me that the EU will be involved in many important discussions on AI governance.
Thanks, this is great!
When I was thinking about how important this argument is, I thought that I still expect any generically influential international body to be able to have a lot of influence if it wants to and is seen as being a productive party to negotiations. What do you think? Maybe there are similar situations today where parties who don’t have much relevant economic power can influence negotiations by showing interest and ability to contribute to finding better solutions?
Though this would only hold in a cooperative atmosphere I suppose… would also be interesting how cooperative we expect the atmosphere of international politics around AI to be in the coming years and decades.
Interesting—that seems to converge towards the discussion on liberalism vs realism atmosphere above. On your specific point, if “productive party” = “party able/motivated to contribute to finding better solutions”, I would agree. In political negotiations at many level, from my limited experience there is this odd phenomenon about the relevance of expertise/motivation: expertise/motivation doesn’t matter if everyone has roughly the same amount, but then matters significantly as soon as a subset of parties are having a lot of it (because motivation c an be converted into further expertise or proactive control of the negotiations procedure such as sending reminders to comment to other parties, etc.).
I have observed that phenomenon between nations (e.g. economically small Estonia mattering much more on e-government or digital discussions than you would expect) and between policymakers (e.g. for multiple dossiers, the opinion of the Member of European Parliament (MEP) or diplomat that cares/knows most about the issue matters more and is more respected by other MEPs/diplomats).
I imagine low international trust environments would make this difficult though (as knowledge/expertise can be manipulated for one’s own interest)
Yes, that was also what I intended to communicate with “productive party”. Thanks for the response and especially the examples about Estonia and expert parliamentarians.
A related thought: the more that parties are able to productively contribute to discussions, the more productive the discussions will be and feel, and the more likely a cooperative atmosphere can be maintained. Might be another reason why increasing AI governance expertise of the EU could be really helpful, as it seems very likely to me that the EU will be involved in many important discussions on AI governance.
That’s a good point