In the long arc of humanity's attempts to govern itself collectively, artificial intelligence may mark the moment when the multilateral experiment met its most serious test. The United Nations, conceived as a place where even small nations could shape the shared future, finds itself watching from the margins as Washington and Beijing race to define the terms of a technology that will touch every economy, every labor market, every information system on earth. What is unfolding is not merely a technological competition but a quiet renegotiation of who gets to decide — and who is simply expected
U.N. Struggles for Relevance as U.S.-China A.I. Race Leaves World Behind
Two powers are racing ahead while the rest watches from the margins
Mark
So the UN is basically irrelevant now when it comes to AI?
Mimi
Not irrelevant exactly, but marginalized. The real decisions about how AI develops and gets regulated are happening between the US and China. The UN can't move fast enough to keep up.
Luke
But wait—what decisions specifically? Are we talking about technical standards, or regulatory frameworks, or something else? The source material is pretty thin on what's actually being decided outside the UN.
Mimi
That's a fair point. The reporting identifies the pattern—bilateral competition crowding out multilateral input—but doesn't detail specific governance decisions that have already been made or lost.
Mark
Why can't the UN just speed up? Couldn't they create a faster process for emerging technologies?
Mimi
In theory, yes. But the structural problem is that the US and China have the resources and the strategic incentive to move unilaterally. Why wait for consensus when you can shape the technology yourself?
Luke
And we should note: the source doesn't actually say what the foreign policy experts are basing this on. Are they looking at UN meeting attendance? Actual policy outcomes? It's attributed but not detailed.
Mark
So what happens next? Do other countries just accept this?
Mimi
That's the real question. They could demand a seat at the table. They could try to build alternative frameworks. Or they could accept that on transformative technologies, the great powers will lead.
Luke
And the source doesn't tell us whether smaller nations are actually pushing back or just accepting it quietly.
Mark
Which means we're watching to see if that changes.
Mimi
Exactly. The current arrangement is unstable. It can't hold indefinitely if most of the world feels shut out.
Il Polso
- The US-China AI race has accelerated so rapidly that the space for any broader international input has effectively closed, leaving most of the world without a seat at the table.
- Standards governing how AI systems operate, who regulates them, and who profits are being written by two powers, while wealthy democracies and developing nations alike can only observe.
- The UN's consensus-building machinery — designed for a slower world — cannot keep pace with technology that transforms in months, rendering its working groups and position papers obsolete before they are finalized.
- Unlike the internet or nuclear technology, AI has produced no meaningful international treaty or oversight mechanism, because bilateral competition has crowded out the very deliberation such agreements require.
- Smaller nations have yet to mount a collective challenge to their exclusion, caught between lacking technical expertise and calculating that accepting the bilateral framework may be better than being shut out entirely.
In the long arc of humanity's attempts to govern itself collectively, artificial intelligence may mark the moment when the multilateral experiment met its most serious test. The United Nations, conceived as a place where even small nations could shape the shared future, finds itself watching from the margins as Washington and Beijing race to define the terms of a technology that will touch every economy, every labor market, every information system on earth. What is unfolding is not merely a technological competition but a quiet renegotiation of who gets to decide — and who is simply expected to comply.
The United Nations was built on a foundational promise: that the world's nations, gathered together, could collectively shape the future. That promise is under quiet but serious strain as artificial intelligence development has become, in practice, a bilateral contest between the United States and China — with the rest of the international community watching from the margins.
The shift carries real consequences. The standards that will govern how AI systems function, how they are regulated, and who benefits from them are being set by the two powers with the greatest resources and the highest strategic stakes. European democracies, African nations, Asian economies — all have limited leverage to alter the trajectory. They can observe and comment, but the fundamental decisions are being made elsewhere.
Experts note this is a departure from how earlier transformative technologies unfolded. The internet emerged through more distributed development. Nuclear technology, for all its dangers, was eventually subject to international treaties. Artificial intelligence is different: its speed, its commercial value, and its strategic importance to both Washington and Beijing have created a dynamic in which bilateral competition has simply crowded out multilateral deliberation.
The UN's traditional tools — convening nations, building consensus, establishing norms — were designed for a slower world. By the time a working group drafts a governance framework, the underlying technology has already moved on.
What remains unresolved is whether this arrangement will hold. Smaller nations have not yet mounted a serious collective challenge to their exclusion. Some lack the technical capacity to engage meaningfully; others may judge that accepting the US-China framework is preferable to being left out entirely. But the underlying tension is real: a technology with consequences for all of humanity is being shaped by two powers, and the rest of the world is being asked to accept whatever results.
The United Nations, built on the premise that the world's nations could collectively shape the future, finds itself increasingly sidelined as artificial intelligence development has become a bilateral contest between the United States and China. Foreign policy experts watching the technology unfold say the pattern is unmistakable: two powers are racing ahead, setting the terms of advancement, while the rest of the international community watches from the margins.
This shift represents a fundamental challenge to the multilateral order that has defined global governance for decades. The UN was designed as a forum where smaller nations could have a voice in decisions that affect them all. But artificial intelligence—a technology that will reshape economies, security systems, labor markets, and the basic infrastructure of information itself—is being developed and deployed largely outside that framework. The competition between Washington and Beijing has become so consuming that the space for broader international input has effectively closed.
The consequences are already visible. Standards that will govern how AI systems work, how they're regulated, and who benefits from them are being shaped by the two powers with the most resources and the most at stake. Other nations—whether wealthy democracies in Europe or developing countries in Africa and Asia—have little leverage to influence these decisions. They can observe, they can comment, but they cannot fundamentally alter the trajectory.
Experts point out that this represents a departure from how previous transformative technologies were handled. The internet, for all its flaws, emerged through more distributed development. Nuclear technology, despite its dangers, was subject to international treaties and oversight mechanisms. But artificial intelligence is different. The speed of development, the commercial stakes, and the strategic importance to both the US and China have created a dynamic where bilateral competition has crowded out multilateral deliberation.
The UN's traditional role—convening nations, building consensus, establishing norms—struggles to keep pace with technology that moves in months, not years. By the time a UN working group drafts a position paper on AI governance, the underlying technology has already evolved. The institutions designed to manage global challenges were built for a slower world.
What remains unclear is whether this arrangement will hold. Smaller nations have not yet mounted a serious collective challenge to being excluded from AI governance decisions. Some may lack the technical expertise to engage meaningfully. Others may calculate that accepting the US-China framework is preferable to being left out entirely. But the underlying tension persists: a technology with global consequences is being shaped by two powers, and the rest of the world is being asked to accept the results.
Citazioni salienti
Foreign policy experts said artificial intelligence is a race solely between two rival powers with the rest of the world largely on the sidelines— Foreign policy experts
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