Global AI Governance: Key Steps for Transatlantic Cooperation

Introduction

The EU’s and the United States’ approaches to AI are three-pronged: they involve regulation (the flagship 2024 AI Act and the 2023 Executive Order on AI, respectively), economic competitiveness and industrial policy (CHIPs Acts), and international engagement with third partners (digital diplomacy). At the same time, transatlantic coordination on AI has advanced through the Trade and Technology Council (TTC). Global deployment of AI and machine learning (ML) systems poses important questions for privacy, protection of civil and fundamental rights, workplace protection, surveillance, and cybersecurity. It is therefore crucial that the global frameworks governing this technology align with a democratically oriented and rights-respecting vision. But further efforts are needed to extend global partnerships on AI and thereby ensure that international agenda-setting on AI is aligned with democratic values. The EU and the United States should focus their efforts on joint transatlantic initiatives, in addition to bilateral actions, to deliver concrete and pragmatic international collaboration on AI. This can be achieved despite the differences between the respective EU and US approaches and political uncertainties around the incoming US administration and political realignment in the European Parliament. Without such efforts, third-country partners may be incentivized to adopt standards or deploy AI in ways that undermine a global push for a rights-respecting governance model. The following brief identifies avenues for cooperation between the European Union and the United States in the nexus between AI and foreign policy agendas.