THE launch of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation in Shanghai on July 16, 2026, may mark an important moment in global AI governance. Initiated by China, the body aims to promote cooperation and keep AI beneficial, safe and fair. It has attracted 29 countries, mostly from the Global South, and is expected to grow. To become globally effective, WAICO must broaden its membership across North and South and evolve into a genuinely multilateral institution. President Xi Jinping summarised its ambition: AI development, he said, should not be “a solo performance by a single country, but a symphony of international cooperation”.

WAICO emerges amid a technological dilemma. Like nuclear technology, AI promises major benefits but also raises fears of misuse, instability and harm. The new organisation’s task is not simply to control AI, but to also manage risks while widening access to benefits without discrimination. Its founders should therefore study the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which faced a similar challenge almost seven decades ago.

The atomic bomb demonstrated that nuclear technology could transform the strategic balance between nations and threaten civilisation; the same science also offered advances in medicine, agriculture, industry and energy. The challenge was to prevent destructive applications and share peaceful benefits. President Dwight Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ address to the UN General Assembly in 1953 proposed an international agency to make nuclear technology available for peaceful purposes “for the benefit of all mankind”. His initiative led to the IAEA’s creation in 1957.

The IAEA was never merely a nuclear policeman. Its statute covered peaceful applications, scientific exchange, training, safeguards and safety standards. Its founding principle was to make nuclear........

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