Issue Policy area 4: value laden governance and biased systems become sources of tension

Summary

This issue gathers the report's cross-cutting implications for values and ethics. Global governance structures for emerging technologies that embody human-centric, sustainable and democratic values held by some states could become a new source of international tension. That could happen if those structures alienate key actors whose priorities and values differ. Reliance on biased AI or biased data in future decisions could lead to choices that entrench exclusion and weaken states' social cohesion and economic potential. Ethics and values developed for a physical world may also be hard to apply to emerging digital worlds. That gap could force decision-makers to rethink assumptions about growth, immigration, social cohesion, intelligence gathering, democratic processes and national security.