AI and the governance of sustainable development. An idea analysis of the European Union, the United Nations, and the World Economic Forum

This paper presents an idea analysis of AI in the policy documents and reports of the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Economic Forum. The three organisations expect AI to contribute to sustainability and a prosperous future with better data analysis, greater amounts of quantitative knowledge, and by making economic and social activities less wasteful and more energy efficient. Several challenges are also named: ethics, human rights, cybersecurity, access to reliable data, transparency, and the digital gap. The solutions presented are multi-stakeholder collaboration, cohesive but flexible governance frameworks, but also taking the lead to push for ethical and value-based AI and making sure AI is sustainable. Ideas about AI appear to stem from discourses of ecological modernisation and green governmentality. This framing turns political and structural challenges into technical issues to be solved with more data, greater collaboration, and technical progress. The similarities in ideas between the EU, the UN, and the World Economic Forum also suggest that ideas about AI and sustainable development have reached discourse institutionalisation. Ideas about AI are therefore likely to reinforce already existing institutional and discursive settings.