Date of Award

8-2024

Document Type

Campus Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Global Governance and Human Security

First Advisor

Stacey D. VanDeveer

Second Advisor

J. Samuel Barkin

Third Advisor

Karen Ross, Joshua C. Gellers

Abstract

In about 75 years since the conceptual and theoretical foundations were laid out, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has evolved from pure imagination to reality. AI technologies bring with them positive and negative changes, and as a result, it became one of the pressing issues of global governance talking points, seeking to balance between its dual nature and accordingly, attempting to [re]organize human affairs through new policies and frameworks. These policies and frameworks are indications of an AI governance architecture ‘in-the-making’, and of emerging patterns of behavior that would define and determine ways to develop and deploy this technology for the years to come. On the other hand, these also indicate efforts of [re]arranging power and authority that would dictate directions of development and deployment of this technology. In this study I examine these documents to accomplish two tasks: first, I identify the emerging AI governance norms and second, I examine how are the authority delegated among state and non-state actors to perform those AI governance functions. Using von. Wright’s norm analysis framework, I have identified five AI governance norms emerging namely – the norms of ‘AI-fication’, ‘datafication’, ‘trustworthiness’, ‘anthropocentrism’, and the norms of ‘enviro-centrism’. These five norms lay the foundation for current or future AI governance architecture. The emergence of the AI governance norms suggests co-constitutive processes and mechanisms of norm emergence. Particularly, the nature and characteristics of AI technologies generated tensions between the existing normative architecture and the actors’ strategic preferences to make the deployment and development of AI at scale feasible. Resolution of this tension, however, is being done using two techniques in the case of AI governance norms: one is the strategic framing, and the second is the contextualized [re]interpretation of the norms of ‘privacy’ and ‘individual liberty’ in the context of AI development and deployment that lay the foundation for the emergence of new norms – ‘datafication’ and ‘trustworthiness’. Overall, the delegation of governance authority among states and non-state actors indicates shifting power away from states at various degrees and new [re]organization of governance structure in the case of global AI governance. Particularly, I find in this study that - 1) states are likely to exercise authority in governance functions with national security ramifications; 2) states share governance authority with private actors in governance functions in which states seems to have less expertise, knowledge, and resources; 3) states seemingly delegate authority exclusively to non-state actors, particularly to the International Organizations and civil society groups, to govern over issues of human rights.

Comments

Free and open access to this Campus Access Thesis is made available to the UMass Boston community by ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. Those not on campus and those without a UMass Boston campus username and password may gain access to this thesis through resources like Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global (https://www.proquest.com/) or through Interlibrary Loan. If you have a UMass Boston campus username and password and would like to download this work from off-campus, click on the "Off-Campus UMass Boston Users

Off-Campus UMass Boston Users

Additional and Related Files

M. Hasan_Title Page.pdf (202 kB)

Share

COinS