Breathing Oxygen into a Failing World Order: AI's Global Diplomacy

The prevailing wisdom holds that the world is fragmenting, and that an accelerating Artificial Intelligence (AI) military race, a great-power stalemate at the United Nations Security Council, and deep distrust of multilateral solutions have made cooperation on the technologies that will define this century all but impossible. Garcia takes the audience behind the scenes of global diplomacy to reveal a more nuanced story. Drawing on more than a decade of participant observation at AI summits and negotiations from Geneva and New York to Seoul, Abu Dhabi, Cape Town, and Paris, as a Global Commissioner on the Responsible Use of AI in the Military Domain (The Hague, 2023–2026) and as a member of the International Panel for the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons (Berlin, 2017–2022), she shows that governance is not collapsing but rising in new forms. From the Berlin panel, which advised the UN's effort in Geneva to negotiate a new treaty on autonomous weapons - a process she has observed since 2014 - to the summits where AI governance is now being written, Garcia has watched these rules take shape from the inside. Where treaties stall and leaders hesitate, transnational political networks of scientists and civil society are assembling to move AI governance from principles to practice.

While visiting these diplomatic capitals, she has also watched middle powers breathe new oxygen into that order — their coalitions supplying energy and initiative precisely where the superpowers withhold cooperation. Garcia will trace three movements she has followed and named: a scientist-led movement for Beneficial and Safe AI, a multistakeholder movement for Ethical and Principled AI, and an UN-anchored movement for AI for Good and for Humanity. Across all three, she identifies a striking pattern: grassroots initiatives by those closest to the technology consistently precede and catalyze governmental action. Her account is optimistic but also sobering. The military race continues, the gap between principles and action is real, and competition may yet outpace cooperation. But by reframing AI from a strategic asset into a common good, these networks offer the clearest evidence yet that the international order is being remade — and a firsthand look at who is doing the remaking.

Speaker Bio:

Denise Garcia is a full Professor at Northeastern University in Boston and a founding faculty member of its Experiential Robotics Institute. Garcia was appointed to the Global Commission on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military. Before joining Northeastern, she worked for 3 years at the World Peace Foundation, part of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. She is currently a research member of the Institute for Economics and Peace (Sydney).

She is formerly a member of the International Panel for the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons (2017-2022), of the Research Board of the Toda Peace Institute (Tokyo, 2020-2023), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (Autonomous Weapons Group), and an advisor to the Global Challenges Foundation (Stockholm). She was a funded Nobel Peace Institute Fellow in Oslo in 2017.

A multiple teaching award-winner, her recent publications appeared in the American Academy for Arts and Sciences (Science and Diplomacy Journal), Nature, Foreign Affairs, International Relations, and other top journals. Her latest book is The AI Military Race: Common Good Governance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Oxford University Press, 2024), in which she examines the complexities entailed in creating a global framework to govern the military use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by proposing inclusive and humane ways to forge cooperation.

Garcia has organized a month-long immersive program in Geneva every year since 2007. She takes her students to learn about international law, diplomacy, world politics, citizen science, and technology in the city known as the capital of peace. She holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of International Studies at the University of Geneva. She teaches International Law each semester at Northeastern’s Boston campus and has recently started a course on AI and world politics. As a national of both Brazil and the United States, Garcia maintains close ties and collaborations around the world.