Artificial intelligence has become the most visible arena of power politics in the twenty-first century, framed as an existential race that promises dominance and decline. Beneath the hype, however, lies a deeper struggle over adoption, standards, and influence. In this contest, as a country still building its developmental capacity, how should India think about power, progress and strategy?
Politics of the current age is not merely about technology; it is politics for technology, of technology and increasingly by technology. Artificial intelligence is only the most visible expression of a deeper reconfiguration in how power is created, exercised and contested. Societies and states are being reshaped faster than institutions can adapt. The emergence of AI both coincides with and is implicated in the shift in the global balance of power that has been underway for the past two decades. Order is yet to emerge.
AI has become shorthand for this moment because it concentrates many of the Information Age’s anxieties into a single domain: potential, control, dependence, exclusion and influence. It is exacerbated by a breathless narrative that projects it as an existential race where the winner-takes-all. Atul Mishra’s reminder in this issue that AI has not changed the fundamental nature of global politics and falls well within the scope of our understanding of international relations theory is a helpful corrective to the hype. Even so, as Syed Akbaruddin notes, AI has triggered a global scramble to establish the rules of this new era.