The International Law Review Association: Online Forum
Abstract
The global economic community must establish a new organization that helps to create contracting parameters to ensure that AI does not crash economies, namely those in the developing world that are most at risk.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will revolutionize the global economy. While many debate the ramifications for developed economies, such as the United States, these effects will likely be increased productivity and the loss of jobs across the workforce.1 This comment argues that these effects will be even more profound in developing nations due to both AI in their direct economies and the downstream effects of automation. The possible effects could be devastating with ensuing social strife or other resulting possibilities such as war.2 Therefore, remedies to soften the blow of AI must be considered not just for developed economies but for the developing world as well. Two possible solutions to this issue are contracting between individual corporations and a nation or an international agreement. This comment will argue that combining contracting between individual corporations conducting business within developing nations with international guarantees would be the best check on AI exploitation due to their specificity and enforcement mechanisms. Proposed agreements and the recently adopted EU Agreement on AI will be analyzed in the context of international business law, and then, possible terms of individual contracting between corporations and governments will be discussed.
Due to the concern about an unfair market, there should be an international commission that sets up contracts for large, medium, and small-sized entities within the global economy. The commission would likely be the size of the WHO or some other international regulatory body.3 This body will have to be large and will create the necessary enforcement mechanisms that will allow companies to quickly access and create contracts while mitigating the most harmful aspects of the AI revolution. Of course, there would be large international conferences to form this body and to ensure that contracts are written up in standard form by experts around the world. This would be a challenge on a monumental scale, yet the stakes are too high not to take global action. AI can shape the future of humanity or destroy it; therefore, it will take monumental international collaboration to keep AI technology under control as it pertains to economics.
Recommended Citation
A.B. Steinberg,
Comment,
Mitigating AI’s Harmful Effects in Developing Economies through Contracting,
ILRA Student Forum
(2024)
