Last month, I asked hundreds of young people from all over Europe what the internet would look like in 2036. For 46%, it was “something we can’t imagine yet.” This was the most common single answer, and it reflects how the technological revolution driven by artificial intelligence is moving faster than we can imagine it, let alone govern it. 

What’s worse, AI is not arriving into a stable world. From Ukraine to Gaza, each unchallenged threat or use of force pushes the international legal order closer to what Prime Minister Mark Carney has called a “rupture.” The shared rules of international order that have held for 80 years are being torn up, at precisely the time when the one technology that most needs shared rules is growing more powerful and influencing every part of our lives. 

A world that cannot agree on rules will hand AI to those who answer to no one. And that should worry anyone who still believes in accountability. Nowhere is this more evident than in the manipulation of what people see and take to be true. And AI has made this manipulation easier. Before last year’s Moldovan parliamentary elections, a Russian-funded network of just over 100 fake accounts racked up 50 million views in under three months,........

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