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> If you want competition then you need something like the WTO as a mechanism to prevent countries from putting up trade barriers etc.

That's an enforcer. Unfortunately, nobody follows through with its sanctions, so it's devolved into a glorified opinion-providing body.

> If some countries want to collaborate on some CERN project they just... do that

CERN is about doing thing, not not doing things. You can't CERN your way to nuclear non-proliferation.




> You can't CERN your way to nuclear non-proliferation.

Non-proliferation is, the US has nuclear weapons and doesn't want Iran to have them, so is going to apply some kind of bribe or threat. It's not cooperative.

The better example here is climate change. Everyone has a direct individual benefit from burning carbon but it's to our collective detriment, so how do you get anyone to stop, especially the countries with large oil and coal reserves?

In theory you could punish countries that don't stop burning carbon, but that appears to be hard and in practice what's doing the most good is making solar cheaper than burning coal and making electric cars people actually want, politics of infamous electric car man notwithstanding.

So what does that look like for making AI "safe, secure and trustworthy"? Maybe something like publishing state of the art models for free with full documentation of how they were created, so that people aren't sending their sensitive data to questionable third parties who do who knows what with it or using models with secret biases.


> Unfortunately, nobody follows through with its sanctions, so it's devolved into a glorified opinion-providing body.

That's a little misleading. What actually happened is summarized here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellate_Body

Since 2019, when the Donald Trump administration blocked appointments to the body, the Appellate Body has been unable to enforce WTO rules and punish violators of WTO rules. Subsequently, disregard for trade rules has increased, leading to more trade protectionist measures. The Joe Biden administration has maintained Trump's freeze on new appointments.




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