Article by Akash Kapur: “In recent years, governments have increasingly pursued variants of digital sovereignty to regulate and control the global digital ecosystem. The pursuit of AI sovereignty represents the latest iteration in this quest.
Digital sovereignty may offer certain benefits, but it also poses undeniable risks, including the possibility of undermining the very goals of autonomy and self-reliance that nations are seeking. These risks are particularly pronounced for smaller nations with less capacity, which might do better in a revamped, more inclusive, multistakeholder system of digital governance.
Organizing digital governance around agency rather than sovereignty offers the possibility of such a system. Rather than reinforce the primacy of nations, digital agency asserts the rights, priorities, and needs not only of sovereign governments but also of the constituent parts—the communities and individuals—they purport to represent.
Three cross-cutting principles underlie the concept of digital agency: recognizing stakeholder multiplicity, enhancing the latent possibilities of technology, and promoting collaboration. These principles lead to three action-areas that offer a guide for digital policymakers: reinventing institutions, enabling edge technologies, and building human capacity to ensure technical capacity…(More)”.
