The Forum on AI Risk and Resilience (FAIRR)

Background

While domestic measures are the required foundation for the governance of GenAI, its transnational nature makes international mechanisms a necessary corollary.¹ Domestic governance cannot function if actors can operate beyond a state’s jurisdiction. GenAI tools cross borders with relative ease.² An international regime is required to close gaps. A series of tailored mechanisms are most appropriate as governance arrangements work best when fitted to specific issues and challenges. GenAI presents risks at the nexus of geopolitical, transnational, and societal concerns. This memo focuses on a subset of three interconnected aims: 

SCSP proposes a new multilateral and multi-stakeholder Forum on AI Risk and Resilience (FAIRR). That new regime must function within the realities of today’s international landscape – deepening geopolitical tensions and limited trust. The world has met similar challenges before. The Cold War superpowers recognized shared challenges and created tools to manage them.³ More recently, in confronting transnational terrorism, climate change, and financial crisis, nations have sought to avoid ungoverned spaces as fonts of instability.⁴ Therefore, FAIRR is the path forward as a new international entity scoped in mission and inclusive in nature.

Mission 

FAIRR’s work would center on three interconnected governance needs. First, nation-states share broadly common ground in preventing misuse and malign use of GenAI tools by non-state actors. Illicit uses of GenAI tools that contribute to harms from economy-sapping fraud⁵ to bio-terrorism⁶ are detrimental to all. Second, while the contours might differ state-by-state, countries generally agree on the need to prevent harms such as discrimination.⁷ Governance alignment to prevent these harms from creeping across borders and negatively impacting populations would constitute a likely point of at least partial agreement. Third, states require a forum to discuss and deconflict instances where GenAI tools can cross boundaries and impact the sovereign activities of other states. For instance, the world will require a forum for dialogue to develop norms around legitimate GenAI-enhanced speech in an era of both growing misinformation and transnational censorship, potentially including around elections. Finally, pursuing all three sets of issues within one entity would help address the blurred lines between the three spaces. Particularly in the digital realm, states have deployed non-state actors for state ends.⁸  

Structure 

FAIRR would not constitute a new formal international agency, with international legal personality grounded in a treaty and creating binding rules.⁹ Hurdles from treaty ratification¹⁰ to skepticism of international institutions¹¹ preclude that path. Instead, FAIRR would serve as a forum to promulgate alignment based on soft law.¹² FAIRR would convene relevant stakeholders — including national officials, regulators, relevant private sector companies, academia, and civil society — to work toward interoperable standards and rules that domestic regulators can independently implement. 

Participation

Establishing FAIRR under the auspices of the G20 would both provide a legitimate foundation and establish a basis for its founding members. As with the Financial Stability Board (FSB),¹³ FAIRR would benefit from being sufficiently inclusive to cover enough of the global economy to drive both member and non-member adherence to the established rules. Such an impetus would support seeking PRC participation in order to work toward globally comprehensive and consistent practices. Less ambitiously, even if the members became deadlocked, the PRC’s participation in FAIRR would help avoid forum shopping¹⁴ that could lead to the PRC rallying an international grouping under alternative rules inimical to U.S. values and interests.¹⁵

Furthermore, while drawing on a G20 foundation, FAIRR should voluntarily go beyond that core G20 membership in two respects. First, it should include as full original members any state with a headquarters of a GenAI actor over a certain compute threshold, such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE).¹⁶ Such a move would help avoid nations with GenAI capabilities looking to caucus states to build alternative regimes. Second, as GenAI is first and foremost a private sector-driven advancement,¹⁷ FAIRR should be multi-stakeholder in composition, including major private entities with GenAI capabilities over a certain compute threshold as full voting members. A weighted voting system¹⁸ would help ensure national governments remained dominant over private entities in order to maintain the primacy of public interests. Additionally, an advisory committee(s) of academic and civil society experts could help balance private sector interests at the table. 

Operations

Full members, original members (state and non-state), plus states that grow to meet the criteria of being home to an above-threshold model, would set relevant standards and rules. Members would participate in a double-weighted voting system to capture both state and non-state equities and disparate capabilities. Under this system, the total voting share of states would equal twice the voting shares of non-state members. Simultaneously, to distinguish among state capabilities, the total share of votes for states would be proportional to the number of qualifying private GenAI entities in their jurisdiction (with a minimum of one vote per state).  

Similar to the FSB or the Financial Action Task Force (FATF),¹⁹ a peer review process of domestic regulators would provide political pressure to abide by commonly set terms.²⁰ Noncompliant members would confront market ramifications based on their recognized higher risk, such as business withdrawals or chilled investment in response.²¹ 

Funding

Resourcing must take place in a manner that maintains FAIRR’s legitimacy. Perceptions of private funding leading to corporate interest capture would undercut the entire initiative.²² Consequently, funding for the secretariat and operating costs should fall primarily (majority) with national contributions, likewise differentiated according to vote share. Private companies would contribute a minority share of the budget with proportions divided based on market capitalization.

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