Over the past year, global AI governance has undergone significant changes: first, collaboration among industry, academia, and governments has become increasingly close; second, binding regulation imposed on enterprises has slowed down; third, the international community’s focus has shifted from safety to action and impact, and enthusiasm for AI Safety Summits has diminished.

Global AI governance is transitioning from the establishment of principles to regulatory implementation, yet fragmentation remains an issue. We are now entering a phase of regulatory diversification characterized by clearer rules and more divergent models. The United Nations should play a central role in norm-setting and coordination, ensuring that AI governance aligns with broader human development goals.

The era of artificial intelligence may further exacerbate global development inequalities, while current discussions on AI governance have yet to adequately reflect the interests of Global South nations. In response, low-to-medium technology should serve as the fulcrum for social innovation, with China and Indias digital transformation initiatives becoming pivotal to the development of Global South countries.

Currently, AI is moving from technological breakthroughs to application expansion, but governance paths and discourse are still lagging behind. AI governance can be grasped from two dimensions: one is capability governance, the pain point of which lies in the continuous increase in barriers to trade, policy and technology acquisition; the other is subject governance, the difficulty of which lies in how to identify common challenges across countries and systems.

A few days ago, Center for Global AI Innovative Governance released the bilingual version of the report New Trends in Global Artificial Intelligence Governance: Observations from the Shanghai Declaration. The interviewees came not only from economically and technologically developed Global North countries, but also from emerging economies and developing countries Global South representatives.