Artificial intelligence (AI) is developing globally but governance of this technology still happens locally.
This fragmented development will have a significant effect on trust in AI and on whether it can benefit people around the world.
A global governance framework could ensure AI development is less fragmented, enabling everyone to share in its growth.
세계경제포럼, 2025년 11월 10일 게시
Jake Yu
President, Continuum Institute and Managing Partner, Peregrine Ventures
The world is standing at the dawn of the Intelligent Age. This transformation is as profound as the discovery of electricity or the rise of the internet, with over $15 trillion in new value from artificial intelligence (AI) expected by 2030. But recent analysis from the Continuum Institute, which researches AI governance and innovation, suggests that a significant part of that promise could already be at risk, throttled by governance fragmentation, technical incompatibility and a fundamental deficit of trust.
This means an intelligent world economy is being built on a fractured foundation. Algorithms now travel faster than the agreements that govern them and no shared venue exists to coordinate their norms. The result is a trust gap, a silent drag quietly taxing global growth and confidence.
As AI reshapes the global economy, mistrust has become its greatest tax. A new global architecture based on cooperation could transform AI governance from fragmentation into shared growth. This would enable nations to align on AI sovereignty, interoperability and inclusion to build trust in the Intelligent Age.
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The AI trust deficit
AI is global by nature, but it’s governed locally by design.
The EU codes ethics into law, while the US leans on innovation-first self-governance. China embeds alignment within its national strategy, while much of the Global South still fights for access to compute and inclusion.
The different approaches to AI governance carry merit, but by not working together they fragment and slow its development. Further, early research shows that a 2023 ban of a major AI service in Italy could have led exposed firms to underperform by around 9%, proving that inconsistent governance can negatively affect economic performance.
Without confidence in how systems are trained, tested and validated, innovation stalls, investors hesitate, regulators tighten rules and citizens lose trust. The bottleneck of the Intelligent Age is no longer just compute, it’s also credibility.
A global architecture for AI cooperation
Between national sovereignty and global accountability lies an unclaimed space. This is the vacuum in which global AI governance should exist and where a global architecture for cooperation on AI could emerge.
During the 20th century, nations built economic institutions to stabilize currencies and rebuild trust after crises such as wars. Today, the world faces a parallel challenge; but not to stabilize currencies, instead to stabilize trust in AI – the new currency of the Intelligent Age. This global architecture must rest on three pillars:
- A constitutional framework that defines common principles for safety, transparency and ethical use of AI
- A global operating system of trust that enables interoperability and verification across borders
- A standing council for cooperative intelligence that aligns national strategies, private innovation and social safeguards.
Together, these elements form the blueprint for a global architecture for intelligent cooperation — a system designed not for hierarchy or hegemony, but for coexistence, accountability and collective progress.
How cooperation between nations during the 20th century could inspire global AI governance in the Intelligent Age.Image: Continuum Institute, 2025
A cooperative intelligence constitution
A constitutional framework could help to resolve the central paradox of AI governance – how to uphold national sovereignty while ensuring global accountability – by balancing three core imperatives so that technology empowers, rather than divides, people:
The three pillars of a proposed constitutional framework for global AI governance.Image: Continuum Institute, 2025
Together, these pillars form a governance compass that can enable unity of purpose on foundational AI principles such as safety and human dignity, while respecting diversity in implementation and cultural expression. One example of this approach is the African Union’s Continental AI Strategy, which seeks to build sovereign capacity rather than rely solely on foreign technologies.
An operating system for AI trust
Governance must also evolve from policy on paper into protocol in practice. A two-layer architecture such as the one below could help support this because it would be light enough for many countries to adopt, but strong enough to help them all align on AI governance:
A two-layer operating system could help nations manage global AI governance.Image: Continuum Institute, 2025
The first layer, the constitutional core, would establish shared technical standards and governance elements that ensure transparency, safety and accountability across the global system. Then, the local overlay would form a second layer that would allow each jurisdiction to apply context-specific regulations for sectors such as health, labour or defence, while maintaining alignment with the global baseline.
One protocol. Many policies. Shared trust. A digital World Trade Organization for algorithms.
To steward this system, governments, research labs and standards bodies could jointly establish a World Council for Cooperative Intelligence (WCCI). This would be a lean, global institution that ensures intelligent systems remain safe, compatible and credible. It would not create standards from scratch but would harmonize and validate those from leading bodies like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), focusing specifically on cross-border interoperability and systemic risk.
The goal should not be control, but continuity. This would ensure that intelligent systems remain transparent, compatible and accountable across borders, while fully respecting national security prerogatives.
Turning governance into growth
The lessons of 20th century economic architecture still hold: cooperation can compound prosperity. Good governance is not bureaucracy, it is the engine of sustainable growth. And when compliance becomes confidence, nations can unlock three self-reinforcing flywheels:
Through AI governance, nations can boost trust in AI so it benefits everyone.Image: Continuum Institute, 2025
Each turn of these flywheels would compound trust into legitimacy, and legitimacy into growth.
In the Intelligent Age, the world is redefining how people create value, exercise leadership and thrive in an era of constant disruption. To support these developments, global leaders must:
- Adopt a shared framework for multilateral dialogue and cooperation, similar to the economic system of the 20th century
- Launcha model passport initiative with a coalition of willing nations and companies to operationalize AI transparency and trust
- Convenea task force to draft the charter of an organization like the WCCI – a modern institution for a cooperative, intelligent world.
The world needs a new kind of global leadership to steward it into the Intelligent Age, one that fuses governance with innovation, informed by intelligence, driven by purpose and accountable to all stakeholders, including future generations.
