The UN Summit of the Future represents a significant effort by the international community to address pressing global challenges through enhanced multilateralism and digital governance. This brief examines the summit's focus on establishing frameworks for the responsible development and ethical use of AI, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and accountability in governance. It explores the potential of AI to address climate change, the digital divide, and resource management alongside the risks of exacerbating existing inequalities and environmental challenges. The summit is positioned as a crucial opportunity to renew global commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), emphasizing the need for sustained leadership and a unified approach among governments, private sectors, and civil society to effectively translate the summit's ambitious goals into meaningful action.
Introduction
The UN Summit of the Future is one of the most ambitious undertakings by the international community in years. Four years since the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, and three years since his Our Common Agenda report in September 2021, world leaders met last month in New York to discuss issues related to global governance and emerging global challenges. The subsequent adoption of the Pact for the Future, which included a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations (A/RES/79/1), expressed the international community's intention to address both present and future challenges through enhanced multilateralism, digital governance, and the protection of future generations' rights.
The Summit took place against the backdrop of worsening UN Security Council disfunction, uneven and halting progress towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), worsening global inequalities, and the disruptive influence of emerging technologies. Among the key commitments identified by world leaders, academics, and civil society representatives were the reform of international institutions and in particular of the UN Security Council, the need to refocus global efforts to meet the SDGs by 2030, and redressing global inequalities, by harnessing, among others, the potentially transformative power of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
AI and the UN Summit of the Future
The explosion of AI-enabled and augmented technologies has rapidly elevated its importance on the global stage, prompting urgent discussions on the need for international frameworks to ensure its responsible development and ethical use, as well as intensive consideration of AI’s potential to contribute positively to global development. Recognizing both the opportunities and the dangers, the Summit called for a multilateral approach to AI governance, emphasizing transparency, accountability, and collaboration to prevent misuse while maximizing its benefits for achieving the SDGs and addressing global inequalities.
Anticipating these concerns, and with the stated goal of “an inclusive, open, sustainable, fair, safe and secure digital future for all,” the Global Digital Compact outlines a series of objectives, including “closing all digital divides and accelerating progress across the Sustainable Development Goals; expanding inclusion in and benefits from the digital economy for all; fostering an inclusive, open, safe and secure digital space that respects, protects and promote human rights; advancing responsible, equitable and interoperable data governance approaches; and finally enhancing international governance of artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.”
The proposed vehicle for translating these ambitious goals and objectives is a combination of existing and new institutional arrangements and initiatives, which takes an “agile, multidisciplinary and adaptable multi-stakeholder approach,” starting with the creation of an International Scientific Panel on AI, a Global Dialogue on AI Governance, an AI Standards Exchange, a Global Fund for AI, and a Global Data Framework. These initiatives are intended to, in the words Mr. Guterres, respectively “promote common understanding on AI capabilities, opportunities and risks; anchor AI governance in international norms and principles, including human rights; bridge the AI [financial] divide; [and] foster technical compatibility.”
Finally, an AI Office at the United Nations is proposed to assist in ensuring that each of these initiatives has the necessary support and carries forward the momentum, with the office acting “as a coordinating body, supporting the implementation of the other recommendations and ensuring a coherent UN-wide approach to AI governance.” The proposed office would work closely with governments, private sector stakeholders, and civil society to facilitate the implementation of ethical AI standards and policies. Additionally, the office would monitor AI’s impact on sustainable development, helping to address emerging challenges and opportunities in real-time.
AI and Global Challenges Facing Development
These developments are in many ways a direct response to both the opportunities and challenges that many feel are associated with both the current moment through which the international rule-based order is going and the failure to adequately address increasing global disparities. With the world at an inflection point, much of the conversation now hinges on the potential uses of AI technologies to address these global inequalities and its likely impact on climate change, the digital divide, and shifting geopolitical boundaries, to mention just some of the challenges that lie ahead.
The European Commission’s own study on climate change and environmental degradation has concluded that “continued unabated, anthropogenic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions will further increase changing climate patterns,” adding that “even if all emissions from human activities suddenly stopped” current concerning and threatening climate change trends would remain. Those conclusions remain consistent across various assessments, including the latest report on the State of the Global Climate 2023 by the World Meteorological Organization.
The trend becomes even more concerning in light of increasingly powerful large language models (LLMs) which seem to demand more and more energy resources. According to Epoch AI, “the cost of training frontier AI models has grown by a factor of 2 to 3x per year for the past eight years, suggesting that the largest models will cost over a billion dollars by 2027… with amortized hardware and energy cost for the final training run of frontier models growing the fastest at a rate of “2.4x per year since 2016 (95% CI: 2.0x to 3.1x).”
The growing demand for energy to support the construction of large data centres is already visible across the world, including in many parts of the Global South. For example, in Latin America, which is seen as an attractive investment destination due to “the region's strategic geographic location and relatively low operating costs… major operators such as Ascenty, ODATA, KIO Networks, Equinix, and Telmex have a significant presence, with Microsoft, [AWS], and Google Cloud further boosting the region’s growth.” These investments have turned countries in the region—Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia—into ‘primary data centre hubs’ leading to improved access to digital services and boosting employment in the region.
In places like the municipality of Colón, in the central Mexican state of Querétaro, this AI boom has meant an investment to the tune of $10 billion “for new data centres from Microsoft, Google and Amazon,” driven in part by the local government’s decision to incentivize these companies to move into the municipality through a combination of tax or land benefits. However, the increased investment in data centres has coincided with increased demands for water resources, at a time when the region’s farmers are faced with droughts and difficult decisions brought about by water rationing leading to crop failure.
The UN estimates the world population will surpass 9.5 billion people by 2050, with much of the growth taking place across the Global South, likely leading to increased demands for food. As a result, the need for agricultural output will only increase, putting even more strain on farmers, like those in Mexican state of Querétaro. This makes the relationship between resource use and growth in AI-related investments even more complicated, with AI seen as playing “a key role in making processes more efficient through agricultural robotics and digital workforce, predictive analytics and precision farming, and risk management.”
Also, for many, AI is seen as key to the fight against climate change, be that by “predict[ing] weather, track[ing] icebergs and identify[ing] pollution… AI can also be used to improve agriculture and reduce its environmental impact, [and] the power of AI to process huge amounts of data and help humans make decisions is transforming industries.” Additionally, AI's ability to analyze vast datasets and assist in decision-making is viewed as crucial in tackling climate change, whether by optimizing resource use, improving renewable energy systems, or aiding in conservation efforts, further demonstrating its transformative potential across multiple sectors.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a recent AI-related discussion hinted at yet another, albeit less encouraging, dimension of the relationship between AI and climate change. According to various reports tech giants and “many AI executives, like OpenAI's Sam Altman, [are] racing toward sustainable energy options for AI, [while] others are doubling back to fossil fuels to meet the present demand. Meanwhile some, including several of tech's biggest names and Microsoft itself, are exploring the potential of nuclear energy to match both the speed of AI investment and its demands on the energy grid.”
Even Schmidt’s former company, Google has admitted that the company has “a long way to go to meet [its] 2030 target,” with data center energy demand expected to grow by 160 percent by 2030. Even more troubling, a recent Guardian report revealed that “from 2020 to 2022 the real emissions from the ‘in-house’ or company-owned data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple are probably about 662% – or 7.62 times – higher than officially reported.” Despite this sobering data, Schmidt has proposed a no-holds barred approach and doubling down on AI investments, suggesting that resource conservation is the wrong approach and that since “we're not going to hit the climate goals anyway… I’d rather bet on AI solving the problem, than constraining it and having the problem.”
Schmidt’s approach reflects a general consensus, especially prevalent in Silicon Valley, with the prevailing narrative being that AI and technology will enable humanity to transcend its limitations and overcome our most entrenched challenges. However, the reality is that AI, as a tool, amplifies both the best and worst aspects of human nature. This duality means that, while AI holds tremendous potential for progress, it also risks exacerbating existing problems, including deepening inequality, accelerating climate change, and entrenching imbalances of power. Ultimately, the core issues within the global development landscape remain unresolved, and without careful governance, AI could further magnify these challenges rather than alleviate them.
Conclusion
In light of growing inequality and the persistent digital divide, coupled with the shifting dynamics of global geopolitics, the need for future-proofing developmental policies has never been more urgent. Technological disruptions, particularly in AI and digital technologies, have created both opportunities and challenges that demand careful governance to ensure they serve the global good. Despite progress toward the 2030 Agenda, global crises such as the pandemic and ongoing conflicts have set back efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), exposing critical shortcomings in international cooperation and resilience.
The UN Summit of the Future offers a pivotal moment to renew global commitment to the SDGs and recalibrate international development efforts. By addressing these pressing issues and setting a long-term agenda, the summit can catalyse action on a global scale. However, sustained leadership and multilateral cooperation will be essential to translating the summit’s goals into concrete outcomes. Only through a united, forward-thinking approach can the international community, including governments, private actors, and civil society, overcome current challenges.
