Global AI Governance and Sovereignty: Who Gets to Control the World's Most Powerful Technology?

TamilTech AI summary

Global AI governance and AI sovereignty have become major geopolitical debates as nations race to shape the rules, values, and power structures behind Artificial Intelligence systems that affect healthcare, justice, finance, warfare, and daily life. AI governance covers the laws, standards, and institutions that keep systems safe, protect rights, ensure accountability, and balance innovation with risk, while AI sovereignty means a country can develop and control its own compute, data, models, and regulations without depending on foreign infrastructure. The EU leads with its risk-based AI Act as a de facto global standard, the US favors lighter innovation-first rules plus chip leadership, China pursues state-directed AI and standards influence, and India seeks a principles-based third path through IndiaAI Mission focused on domestic compute, Indian-language data, sovereign models, and Global South inclusion. The AI chip war underscores that advanced semiconductors mostly come from limited sources like TSMC in Taiwan, so the US, EU, China, and India are all pouring money into domestic fabs because whoever controls the chips heavily influences future AI power. For ordinary people this matters because governance decisions decide whether you can appeal an AI loan rejection, who is liable for a wrong medical diagnosis, how job screening bias is handled, whether deepfakes get taken down, and if your data was used with consent—while India is well placed to offer an innovation-friendly, rights-protective, inclusive, and sovereign model for the Global South.

• What is the EU AI Act and does it affect India?
• What is AI sovereignty and why does India care?
• Is there a global AI treaty like the nuclear non-proliferation treaty?
• How does AI governance affect AI development in India?

AI-assisted summary, checked by the TamilTech editorial team.