INTRODUCTION
Since its establishment, the BRICS format has become a systemic and integral factor of international relations. Its viability is no longer in any doubt. Brazil’s rotating chairmanship in 2019 has also demonstrated that regardless of the political vicissitudes in its member states, BRICS remains highly relevant. Engagement in the BRICS format is not limited to annual summits, as some critics claim; by now, the member states have managed to build a dense and tightly intertwined network of cooperation on a steadily growing range of issues. The BRICS New Development Bank is up and running; in 2019 alone, the NDB Board approved 12 new investment projects in the BRICS states. The 42 investment projects approved since the bank began operations in 2015 are worth a total of over 11bn dollars. Work is under way to strengthen the BRICS Pool of Conventional Currency Reserves, a pool of reserve capital meant as a financial stability cushion for the BRICS states in the event of a crisis.
Nevertheless, despite some obvious success stories, the pace of the progress towards achieving the original BRICS ob - jectives leaves much to be desired. These objectives include a restructuring of the global financial architecture; a strength - ening of the BRICS members’ positions in the UN system; and facilitating a transition towards a multicentric world order.
In this transitional period, it is especially important for BRICS to further strengthen dialogue with its external partners, primarily the BRICS-Plus states. The fact that the bloc does not currently include any Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian states limits the potential for the formation of the BRICS partnership network. On the whole, while the current BRICS membership is very impressive, it still does not include any Islamic states, which creates a certain imbalance – even though Muslims make up a sizeable minority in two of the five current BRICS members, India and Russia.
We agree with the view expressed by G.D. Toloraya, Director of the National Committee for BRICS Studies, that building up partnerships with large non-BRICS members who are showing interest in the bloc would be a significant step towards making BRICS more relevant as an organization that expresses the interests of the greater part of our planet’s population. Allowing this process to drag on for too long raises the risk of the former BRICS “circle of friends” looking for alternative ways of becoming more involved in global governance. That is why in the medium term, it would be useful to think about serious changes in the format and contents of BRICS activities.
One of the potential solutions would be to invite new mem - bers – but it would be important to make sure that those new members are stronger economies that can make a tangible contribution to the bloc. Other factors that must be considered include the membership candidates’ relative political and economic independence from the existing centers of global power, their political orientation, the clout they wield at the international economic institutions, and their involvement in regional integration initiatives. Over the medium terms, potential candidates might include six states: Argentina, Mexico, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, and Indonesia.
The purpose of this report is to analyze whether and to what extent the admission of one or several of these states could strengthen (or perhaps weaken?) the BRICS role in the international security architecture. Since PIR Center research has long focused on such issues as WMD nonproliferation, peaceful nuclear energy, space exploration, international information security, and new technologies, the emphasis of this paper is on the potential role of BRICS in addressing these challenges. PIR Center Artificial Intelligence in BRICS: Any Potential for Synergy?
By Vadim Kozyulin
Global competition for dominance in the area of advanced digital technologies is now at the center of many international processes. In this “battle of giants”, the two main actors – the United States and China – account for 90% of market capitalization of the world’s 70 largest digital platforms. Europe’s share is 4 per cent, while Africa and Latin America account for only 1 per cent between them.
A simple comparison of the BRICS nations’ digital assets demonstrates that China is far ahead of the rest of the bloc put together by this particular measure. Beijing’s strategy, called Next-Generation AI Development Plan, aims to restore to China its lost position as the global technological leader – a position which, according to the Chinese leadership, the country has held firmly for most of its history. Beijing views the global digital space as a battlefield where the main technologically advanced countries “try to dominate in the new round of international technological competition”, and where China faces the task of “firmly grasping the strategic initiative in the new stage of international competition in AI development”. The United States regularly reinforce that Chinese vision by adding a clear anti-Chinese aspect to all AI-related alliances, from the OECD to the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI). It is worth noting that India, the second most powerful digital nation in the BRICS bloc, is a GPAI member. Washington is skillfully trying to recruit New Delhi as a member of an alliance targeted against China. These efforts have been made easier by the recent border conflict between the two countries, which led to a vociferous information war and an Indian ban on the leading Chinese Internet applications.
In this situation of obvious “digital disparity”, BRICS is trying to find a balance of interests. In November 2016, the BRICS nations adopted a “Joint IT Development Program and Action Plan” consisting of six key components: establishing national IT development programs; cooperation between the IT companies at every level; IT research & development and innovation; broadening and strengthening the potential of the digital economy; electronic governance, including mobile platforms; and international cooperation and coordination of joint programs.
In September 2017, the BRICS leaders signed the Xiamen Declaration calling for the establishment of “an institute for research into BRICS future networks”. They also spoke in support of “joint BRICS studies, development and innovation in the area of IT” and “the establishment of internationally applicable rules for IT infrastructure, data protection, and Internet security”. In 2019, there were reports that “the BRICS nations have expressed an interest in forming an alliance for AI development” that could be used to promote shared standards and foster “centers of excellence”. Russia hopes that the Russian Direct Investment Fund will become once such center.
Nevertheless, it appears that BRICS still lacks the will and the energy required to pursue concrete joint projects.
Can BRICS enlargement add momentum to closer AI cooperation?
The accession of new members would turn BRICS into a club of “middleweight” states that cannot position themselves as global centers of AI innovation – but can generate a small number of “unicorns” – that is, companies rapidly advancing to dominant positions in their respective sectors. The problem of the “middleweight” states is that their national markets are just about large enough for the local companies to take off, but they do not generate sufficient amounts of data for such companies to achieve the scale of a global corporation. The local “unicorns” tend to be social networks, e-commerce companies or electronic services outfits that soon bump against the national ceilings of scale and, as a rule, become the target of acquisition by mega-giants such as Microsoft or Amazon.
Turkey, Iran, and Indonesia all rank fairly high in terms of the number of AI researchers and university professors, the number of published research papers, or the citation index. Each of these candidate states dreams of becoming a global magnet for entrepreneurial talent and venture capital – but none of them can break “the curse of the middleweight” on their own.
There are ways of increasing “digital capitalization”. The national AI strategies of some nations aim for a broad diffusion of the various datasets compiled by government agencies, the industry, the business community, and the academia. For example, India has the India Stack national open-source platform, Britain the Catapult, Taiwan the ITRI, South Korea the ETRI, and the Netherlands the TNO. But these efforts are nowhere near enough to catch up with the digital leaders, the United States and China. The formation of an integrated BRICS digital market would be a major step towards joining the leadership race.
Three of the potential BRICS candidates – Turkey, Mexico, and Indonesia – already have some experience of such solutions. In 2013, five “middleweight” nations – Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and Australia – formed the MIKTA group. Its participants hoped to strengthen their positions in the international arena by means of joint intergovernmental initiatives. But MIKTA has yet to show any tangible results, which may suggest the need for further enlargement.
Some of the old and new BRICS members may be attracted by the idea of creating the BRICS Pay supranational open payments system.
Does Beijing need a membership card of the “Middleweights Club”? China may be interested in joining an integration project in order to form a new information infrastructure among the BRICS nations, gain access to the common data bank, exert influence on the adoption of new standards, and prevent the formation of anti-Chinese AI alliances.
Clearly, there are many differences between the BRICS members. And even though digitization cuts distances, the distance is not always measured by miles. In addition to the information war between India and China, different states have different approaches to the limits of information openness, to the issue of acceptable levels of intrusion into their citizens’ private lives by technological monitoring systems, and even to the military uses of AI. For example, Egypt, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil advocate a full pre-emptive ban on the development and application of lethal autonomous systems (LAS). The Indian leadership is also concerned by LAS. Russia, however, believes that autonomous weapons may be useful in some circumstances. South Africa wants limits on such systems’ autonomy and a set of guiding principles for their use. China proposes that LAS manufacture and exports should be allowed, but their combat use banned.
Even though the current AI environment is highly competitive, the main national priorities of different states in the area of AI development largely coincide. Everyone agrees that all AI development should ultimately benefit humankind; that the development and application of AI products should be guided by a certain set of ethical norms; that it is preferable to develop new standards and rules as part of cooperative programs involving the entire international community; and that everyone’s progress would best be served by information and technology sharing, open databases, a broad community of international experts, and a global labor market. BRICS must try to use that positivity inherent in the international community of AI developers to build a fair and equitable system of international relations of the future.
Vadim Kozyulin - Director of the PIR Center New Technologies and International Security Program.
PIR Center
(To be continued)
