International law
Rules binding on states rather than on systems, with no forum above them.
What it commits you to
International law governs AI by governing the states that develop it. UNESCO's 2021 Recommendation was adopted by 193 member states, and the UN General Assembly passed its first resolution on international AI cooperation in 2024. Neither is binding in the way a treaty would be, and no court sits above the actors who build the systems.
Which realms lean on this
Procedure, not conviction. This is the vocabulary of constitutions, audits and the people who have to sign.
governance · 2 realms — The Contractual Court, The Ubuntu Weave.
Canon that discusses this
primary · 1274
Summa Theologiae
A systematic theology in three parts, of which the second — law, justice, and the common good — is the part that enters every later argument about legitimate authority. Its claim that an unjust law is not a law at all makes legitimacy a property of the rule's structure rather than of the body that enacted it.
primary · 1785
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Written in under five months in 1785 and deliberately unreadable, on Kant's own account, because he wanted it to be hard. One maxim is tested three ways — as a universal law, humanity as an end in itself, and the kingdom of ends — and the ground of obligation is the form of the act, never its consequence.
modern · 1950
The Human Use of Human Beings
Wiener applies the theory of feedback and control to law, politics and medicine, and argues that communication is more fundamental than command. The book that gave cybernetics its name in 1948 becomes, two years later, the founding text of the ethics of steering large systems without crushing what they steer. The excerpt below paraphrases the book rather than quoting it.
primary · 1781
Critique of Pure Reason
The first Critique bounds theoretical reason: the synthetic a priori is real, and it reaches only the phenomenal. The second edition of 1787 reorganises the book around the transcendental deduction. The famous closing passage about the starry heavens and the moral law belongs to the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), not this one. The excerpt below paraphrases the programme rather than quoting a translation.
See also
EU AI Act
governanceThe European Union's risk-based regulation of AI, phasing in from 2024.
Global governance
governanceCoordination across states for problems no state can solve alone.
Arms race dynamics
governanceThe pattern in which each party's precautions are read by the other as a threat.
Moratorium
governanceA temporary halt on some class of development, distinct from a permanent prohibition.