Global Coordination

Transformative AI could exacerbate wealth disparities not only within nations but also between them. It could undermine emerging economies, removing rungs from the traditional development ladder by eliminating business process outsourcing and opportunities for labor arbitrage. It could also reshape the balance of economic and political power, transferring the lion's share of economic profits to the few countries in which AI is developed, rather than the many where it is consumed.

Most domestic policy levers – taxation, regulation, social spending – operate within national borders. Yet the economic effects of transformative AI will be global, and countries that lack frontier AI industries may have limited ability to capture value or cushion displacement through domestic policy alone. International coordination mechanisms are necessary to manage these cross-border distributional effects and ensure that developing countries are not excluded from the AI value chain.