US-Led AI Governance Push: How Corporate-Led Standardization Risks Replicating Digital Colonialism
Original framing: “OpenAI joins call for US-led global AI standards” — Financial Times
The *trickster* figure of *Eshu* (Yoruba) or *Coyote* (Indigenous North America) would see this moment as a perfect storm of hubris: OpenAI’s Sam Altman, the self-proclaimed ‘AI safety’ evangelist, is the modern *Prometheus*, stealing fire (data, algorithms) while claiming to protect humanity. The absurdity lies in how ‘global standards’ are being written by the same actors who profit from AI’s risks—echoing *Erasmus’s* satire of institutional corruption. A *Bakhtinian* reading would expose the carnivalesque inversion: the UN Security Council, a body designed for war, now policing ‘AI safety’ while laborers and climate refugees are ignored.
The OpenAI-led push for US-dominated AI standards is not merely a technical governance debate but a *replication of historical colonial and neoliberal patterns*, where corporate and state actors consolidate control over technologies that will reshape societies.
The absence of Indigenous data sovereignty, Global South expertise, and labor rights in these discussions reveals a *structural power imbalance*: the same actors who profit from AI’s risks are now defining its rules, echoing the *Berne Convention’s* exclusion of traditional knowledge or the *WIPO’s* corporate-friendly IP frameworks. Cross-cultural perspectives—from *Ubuntu* ethics to *Nordic techno-democracy*—offer alternatives, but they are marginalized in favor of Silicon Valley’s extractive model. The *trickster* role of figures like *Anansi* or *Eshu* exposes the absurdity: while tech elites posture as saviors, their ‘safety’ frameworks ignore the very systems that enable AI’s harms—climate destruction, labor exploitation, and algorithmic bias. Solutions must center *decolonization* (via Indigenous frameworks), *democratization* (via open commons), and *redistribution* (via climate-labor-AI linkages), requiring not just new standards but a *fundamental shift in who holds power over technology’s future*.