MARTIN BERAJA, DAVID Y. YANG, and NOAM YUCHTMAN
US President George H.W. Bush once remarked that, “No nation on Earth has discovered a way to import the world’s goods and services while stopping foreign ideas at the border.” In an age when democracies dominated the technological frontier, the ideas Bush had in mind were those associated with America’s own model of political economy.
But now that China has become a leading innovator in artificial intelligence, might the same economic integration move countries in the opposite direction? This question is particularly relevant to developing countries, since many are not only institutionally fragile, but also increasingly connected to China via trade, foreign aid, loans, and investments.
While AI has been hailed as the basis for a “fourth industrial revolution,” it is also bringing many new challenges to the fore. AI technologies have the potential to drive economic growth in the coming years, but also to undermine democracies, aid autocrats’ pursuit of social control, and empower “surveillance capitalists” who manipulate our behavior and profit from the data trails we leave online.
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