Standards for AI Governance:International Standards to Enable GlobalCoordination in AI Research & Development

Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents novel policy challenges that require coordinated global responses.2Standards, particularly those developed by existing international standards bodies, can support the globalgovernance of AI development. International standards bodies have a track record of governing a range ofsocio-technical issues: they have spread cybersecurity practices to nearly 160 countries, they have seen firmsaround the world incur significant costs in order to improve their environmental sustainability, and they havedeveloped safety standards used in numerous industries including autonomous vehicles and nuclear energy.These bodies have the institutional capacity to achieve expert consensus and then promulgate standards acrossthe world. Other existing institutions can then enforce these nominally voluntary standards through both ​defacto​ and ​dejure​ methods