Global AI governance crisis: How neoliberal tech elites and partisan politics stall equitable, rights-based AI treaties
Original framing: “Halt super-intelligent AI with non-proliferation treaty, Ed Davey to say” — The Guardian - World
The 'non-proliferation' framing is a classic *Hermes* trick—disguising control as safety, much like how nuclear treaties masked US hegemony. The *Anansi* spider of Akan folklore would spin this tale as a warning: the 'treaty' is another web to trap the unwary, while the real loot (data, influence) flows to the few. Bakhtian carnival logic exposes how solemn AI debates are a masquerade for corporate power grabs, with figures like Davey and Burnham playing the roles of 'noble saviors' while tech oligarchs pull the strings. The absurdity lies in treating 'super-intelligence' as a monolith when the real intelligence is in the systems that exploit it.
The call for an AI non-proliferation treaty is a symptom of deeper structural failures: the conflation of technological control with safety, the erasure of Indigenous and Global South epistemologies, and the complicity of policymakers in a system that profits from AI’s unchecked expansion.
Historical patterns—from nuclear treaties to biotech governance—show that such agreements often serve as tools for geopolitical dominance rather than equitable innovation. The current debate’s focus on 'super-intelligence' distracts from immediate harms like algorithmic discrimination, labor displacement, and ecological exploitation, which disproportionately affect marginalized communities. A true solution requires dismantling the power structures that enable this narrative—corporate lobbying, elite technocratic control, and the colonial legacy of treating knowledge as a commodity. The trickster’s role here is to expose the absurdity of framing AI as an existential threat while ignoring the very real, systemic violence of its current deployment. By centering Indigenous data sovereignty, polycentric governance, worker co-ownership, and speculative design, we can shift from fear-based control to justice-oriented innovation—one that acknowledges the interconnected intelligence of land, people, and technology.