The big idea: Technology now moves faster than the rules meant to govern it. The pressing question: who makes the rules for technology?
What drives the question
- Powerful new tools, above all artificial intelligence (AI).
- The huge power of Big Tech.
- disinformation and misinformation pollute public debate.
Technology is
- Borderless
- Fast
The rules are
- National
- Slow
- Full of holes
So: There are deep gaps in global technology governance.
- Speed — technology advances far faster than laws and treaties can be written.
- Borderlessness — technology and data cross borders, but rules are made nation by nation.
- Concentrated private power — a few Big Tech firms shape the digital world, and set many rules themselves.
- Complexity & expertise — regulators struggle to understand and keep pace with the technology.
A governance gap: There is a widening gap between technology's global reach and the patchwork of rules meant to govern it.
Technology spreads at once
- New tools like AI can be deployed worldwide almost overnight.
- Disinformation spreads across borders instantly.
- Big Tech firms operate everywhere at once.
But the rules are left to
- There is no world government to make binding global rules.
- Individual states, with different rules.
- The companies themselves, which are self-interested.
- Weak international efforts.
The heart of the challenge: This governance gap is the heart of the challenge: technology is powerful and borderless, but the rules are fragmented, slow and full of holes.
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AI sharpens all of this. It can be enormously beneficial, and it is developing faster than any rules.
But AI can also enable
- Surveillance
- Autonomous weapons
- Mass disinformation
- Biased decisions
Shared facts at risk: Meanwhile misinformation and disinformation undermine the shared facts that democracy and cooperation depend on.
The promise and peril of AI
AI can boost medicine, science, productivity and access to information, but the same power enables mass surveillance, autonomous weapons, deepfakes and disinformation at scale, biased or opaque decisions affecting people's lives, and further concentration of power in whoever controls the most advanced models. Its speed and reach make it a governance challenge like no other.
The threat of disinformation
Misinformation (false information spread unwittingly) and disinformation (false information spread deliberately) flood social media, erode trust in shared facts, deepen polarisation, and can be weaponised by states and groups to manipulate elections and sow division. When people cannot agree on basic facts, democracy and international cooperation both suffer.
Case study — regulating a fast-moving AI tool: Imagine a powerful new AI tool that can generate realistic text, images and video is released worldwide. It was built by a private company that effectively set its own rules.
Real benefits
- Helping students, doctors and businesses
Real harms
- Bad actors produce convincing deepfakes
- Floods of disinformation
Governments scramble to respond
- Each writes different laws.
- The technology has already spread across borders.
- Regulators struggle to understand it.
The HL lesson: Technology governance faces a structural gap: the tool is global, fast and privately controlled, while the rules are national, slow and fragmented. So the real question is who makes the rules, and how they can possibly keep up.
The key point: AI and Big Tech concentrate enormous, fast-moving power, while misinformation and disinformation erode shared facts.
Technology is
- Global
- Fast
- Largely privately controlled
The rules are
- National
- Slow
- Fragmented, with no world government to bind them
The defining question: Who makes the rules: states, companies, or new international bodies? And how can governance keep pace with technology?
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Who should make the rules for technology — states, the companies, or new international bodies? Can technology like AI be effectively governed at all, given its speed and borderlessness? Weigh it — and recommend.
The case that technology can be governed
Other powerful, borderless technologies — nuclear, aviation, the environment — have acquired real international rules and institutions over time, so technology governance is possible: states can regulate within their borders, coordinate on shared standards, and build new bodies for AI and data, while pressure and law can force even Big Tech to comply. Difficulty is not impossibility.
The case that it can't keep up
But technology moves far faster than any rule-making, crosses borders that laws cannot, and is controlled by private firms with the expertise and incentive to stay ahead of regulators; powerful states compete rather than cooperate on AI, and there is no world government to bind them. On this view, governance will always lag dangerously behind the technology.
One view
- Technology can be governed, as other borderless technologies eventually were.
- Through national law, international coordination and pressure on firms.
Another view
- Governance can't keep pace with technology.
- Its speed, borderlessness and private control are too much.
Two perspectives — weigh them: Strong HL answers judge that technology can be governed, but only partially and always with a lag.
So the realistic goal
- Not perfect control, but a layered mix:
- Accountable national regulation.
- International norms.
- Pressure on companies.
- Together they narrow the governance gap, even if they cannot close it.
How governing technology comes up in Paper 3: Paper 3 stimulus might show an AI rollout, a disinformation campaign, or a clash over who regulates a tech firm.
Your moves
Analyse the gap
Explain the governance gap.
Ask who rules
Analyse who makes the rules.
Recommend
Usually a layered mix of accountable national regulation, international norms/cooperation, and pressure on companies.
How Paper 3 rewards you (HL)
Understand
Show you understand the challenge and the stimulus material accurately.
base
Analyse
Break the challenge down — causes, actors, perspectives — using the material.
analyse
Recommend
Propose and justify a course of action — the Paper-3-specific skill.
recommend
Synthesise
Pull the material together into a judged, evaluated response.
top
Recommend how technologies like AI could be more effectively governed at the global level.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Common mistakes (Paper 3)
- 1. Assuming one actor can govern technology. It needs states, firms and international cooperation.
- 2. Ignoring the governance gap. Technology is global; rules are national.
- 3. Confusing misinformation and disinformation. Intent to deceive is the difference.
- 4. Only describing AI. Analyse + recommend.
- 5. Expecting perfect control. Realistic goal = narrow the gap, not close it.